Edhat Staff
Source: Santa Barbara City
The City adopted a new law prohibiting smoking in outdoor public areas to provide a healthy, family-friendly, and clean environment for residents and visitors. Smoke-free outdoor areas will reduce cigarette butt litter, lower the risk of fires, and limit public exposure to secondhand smoke. Smoking is prohibited in the following areas:
- Beaches
- Parks, including sports fields, open spaces, and trails
- Sidewalks and paseos citywide in commercial and residential areas
- City parking structures and lots
- Stearns Wharf
- Outdoor restaurant patios before 10:00 p.m.
- Outdoor recreational areas and sports facilities, community centers, and library plazas
- Events open to the public
Smoking is defined to include tobacco, marijuana, and electronic vaping devices. The law is currently in effect with signage planned for installation on sidewalks and other outdoor areas in early 2018. The City will use verbal warnings and public education as the primary means of enforcement. Your cooperation is appreciated.
For more information and frequently asked questions, visit SantaBarbaraCA.gov/Smoking.
The hard work has finally come to fruition! Yeah!
Purely an infringement on personal rights geared at the homeless population and for the police to write tickets. California big government at it’s finest. Instead of being a socialist state perhaps, a communist one would be more appropriate. Maybe Santa Barbara should focus on getting rid of the some seven hundred plus city workers that do nothing and make over $100K plus, plus. Like the forty six year old cop who earned more than $450K two straight years. His pension will be based on his last three years of service and will be funded at eighty percent of the last three year average! Swallow that Santa Barbara! It will take a whole bunch of smoking tickets to pay for that…like 2600 at $155 each every year. No CEO of any profitable company would ever allow such a huge number of employees to earn so much! The company would be broke in no time! Where does the money come from for such idiotic laws and their enforcement? YOU! You socially just fools! That’s why California is ranked near dead last for fiscal health. Oh but, we are one of the world’s largest economies!!! It does not matter if you cannot fund your own retirement!!! Smoke that!!!
Entirely agree.
California is one of the largest economy in the world and definitely the largest communist country in the world (and it’s only getting worse).
Good grief, what time is our curfew? I shouldn’t even say that it’ll probably be up next for discussion at city hall.
Overkill
Slow news day, Edhat? Gotta bring this back up again despite the policy going into effect back in September…
I quit smoking over 4 years ago thanks to electronic cigarettes. While I understand how annoying it is to have smoke/vape gust through downtown while you are trying to enjoy SB, I just don’t understand why we need to have an official “law” which encourages enforcement through verbal warnings.
What happened to just being courteous of those around you? If you don’t like people smoking where you are eating/standing/walking, ask them to smoke somewhere else. If you don’t like people bugging you when you smoke/vape, go do it somewhere else. Dip around a corner or into an alley, go where there aren’t open-air restaurants or children.
I’ll quit vaping in public the day someone shows up with ANY study that actually shows second-hand vapor causing health issues in an open-air setting (or even in-doors). So far no such studies have concluded actual harm. Hell, most studies show minimal-to-no negative impact from vaping anyway. In the mean time I will keep being courteous with my habits and expect others to do the same.
Hooray. About time. I was going to down vote the pro-ciggie and negative comments, but why would I deprive other Edhat readers of the right to see just how many people are callously uncaring and true idiots about secondhand smoke?*********For those of us who don’t enjoy breathing in nasty cigarette smoke chemicals, this is a wonderful ban. How silly that it had to be a ban in the first place. Too bad cigarette smoking people are so —– is it arrogance or just pure ignorance?—-lame about assaulting non-smokers with their addiction. Good on ya City.
Who do I call to report smokers??
The point is simple, Santa Barbara has far worse ills that need addressing! For instance, a dying downtown. As one reader pointed out many of the Asian and European tourists smoke! Did I not just read that nearly $2B was generated by these visitors! Perhaps they will MOVE too!
Simply absurd…people who don’t smoke are more courteous? Drama will be reduced? Perhaps, the drama will be increased when you have peace officers giving tickets to the poor homeless people downtown! What science are you using to calculator these notions.
By PAUL ROGERS Bay Area News Group
PUBLISHED: October 6, 2017
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on Friday Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed two bills that would have banned smoking at all state beaches and state parks in California.
“If people can’t even smoke on a deserted beach, where can they?” Brown wrote in a veto message. “There must be some limit to the coercive power of government.”
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well done, guv’nor. More please. (I’m a liberal)
i hope this applies to tobacco smoking at the food concession area at the Santa Barbara Bowl. It is the designated smoking area of the Bowl and it’s nasty. The Bowl is county owned and should be considered a county park or recreation area. here here
new2sb = drama
Argh! Hurrumph!! Gobble gobble!!!
Go back where you came from, you stupid piece of trash, you aren’t welcome here.
with no competition 40722 is the new board idiot hands down.
Yep and you can’t even type my handle correctly. Do tell us what have you provided to this board besides one stupid comment?
If homeless people don’t stop smoking can they pay a $155 fine? If they can’t pay the fine can we throw them out of the city permanently?