The Consequences of Danville's New Smoking Ban

I’m a smoker. I’ve been a smoker for 20 years now. It’s a ridiculous habit that I’ve given a couple of half-hearted attempts to give up, but for now, I’m still a smoker. I also get it. I get that they stink, especially to nonsmokers. I get that they’re horrible for me and I also get that someone subjected to secondhand smoke can experience negative health consequences as well.

But let’s be honest here – most legislation at this point is either ‘you’ telling me what to do with my body or ‘you’ using legislation thinly veiled as protecting public health to avoid smelling something you don’t like the smell of. If you think about the ramifications of that at anything deeper than surface level, I’d hope you’d be concerned as well. It’s overstepping. And maybe that’s fine, until they’re overstepping on something that has an effect on you.

The town of Danville passed an ordinance back in November that prohibits smoking on any property with more than 2 units. The ordinance went into effect on May 1st. This thing probably started off with reasonable intentions, but somehow morphed into a piece of town legislation that is severely overstepping my own rights. You can read the ordinance here - http://danville-ca.granicus.com/MetaViewer.php?view_id=1&clip_id=110&meta_id=5315

The abridged version – If you live on a property with 3 or more units, you can no longer smoke there. Anywhere. Probably justified, it prohibits smoking in shared areas (hallways, walkways, pools, etc). It goes further, prohibiting smoking within the “unit”. The kicker there is that it defines “unit” as not only the townhome, condo or apartment itself, but also any exclusive indoor or outdoor areas such as patios, decks, garages, etc.

So that’s the deal. If you happen to be a smoker who lives in anything other than a single-family home, enjoy your walk to the road. Enjoy the dirty stares from folks walking by, feeling inconvenienced that they have to smell your smoke as they're out for the evening walk and not understanding your inconvenience for being there in the first place. Forget that you own the property or pay Bay Area rental rates each month. A piece of legislation has been enacted telling you what you can and can’t do in your own home under the guise of protecting your neighbors from secondhand smoke.

Let’s look at that for a minute. There has been plenty of research conducted on the effects of secondhand smoke in enclosed settings, namely indoors. There’s actually been very few studies done on the effects of secondhand smoke outdoors, and the results of those studies are basically filled with common sense.

The most damning was a study conducted by Stanford researches (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2007/may9/smoking-050907.html ) which concluded that when exposed to secondhand smoke within a couple of feet, there was a high level of particulate matter exposure. The study found that if you were 6ft or more away from a smoker, you’re effectively reduced to background levels (read – an area with no smoke at all). It also stated the obvious in that if you were upwind, the exposure is effectively non-existent and that semi-enclosed areas and areas with significant numbers of smokers (ie: a bar patios), see a higher exposure level.

So let’s call this what it is and stop pretending it’s a public safety measure. My townhouse, even on the once a year occasion where I have more than a couple people over, is not a patio at a bar, it’s not a public park and frankly, it’s none of your business. Short of me breaking all sorts of other ordinances and opening a cigar shop on my back patio, you're not going to get cancer because your neighbor enjoys a few cigarettes throughout the day. You're not going to break out in an acute asthmatic attack because you caught a feint whiff of smoke from 20 feet away. Your toy poodle will probably survive. Worse case scenario, you may feel inconvenienced having to shut your window once in a while, but I guarantee that pales in comparison to the inconvenience of me having hoof it out to the street.

My guess is that someone, a non-smoker with a neighbor who smokes, decided they were sick of smelling their smoke, made a fuss about it at a town meeting and the wheels were set in motion to ban smoking on multi-unit properties. The actual exposure to secondhand smoke from living next to someone who smokes, is minimal at worst and could’ve just as easily been avoided by closing your window. You’re either purposely standing 2 feet away from me on the other side of the fence or you’re just complaining and citing health risks that aren't backed by science.

Instead, we’ve added another ordinance to the books, pitted neighbor against neighbor, infringed on my property rights and taken another step down a slippery slope.

This probably doesn’t affect you directly. There are simply a much larger percentage of single family homes in Danville so not your problem, right? But what happens when someone who doesn’t enjoy the smell of your cooking moves next door? What happens when your neighbor doesn’t like the type of fertilizer you’re using in your flower beds? What happens when a neighbor makes a fuss about the smoke coming from your barbeque? That's not rhetorical. Studies have proven that grilling meat produces polycylic aromatic hydrocarbons (PACs) which have shown to cause skin, liver, stomach and several other types of cancer. So seriously, should we be looking at banning grilling or is there an assumption that a neighbor that doesn’t want to smell it or risk the health consequences can simply close their windows?

Thanks Danville. You’re awesome.