New York City Passes New Smoking Ban

By: Emily Ferro
Posted In: News

On Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2011, the City Council of New York City passed legislation banning smoking in parks, on benches and in Times Square. This ban is in addition to the 15 other indoor venues listed by the New York State Department of Health as non-permitted smoking areas. This list includes bars, restaurants, community pools, child care establishments and essentially all public indoor facilities. Even hotels, which are not legally banned, have the right to exercise their own bans on smoking in a room.

So what does this mean for smokers? Well, in New York it means that smokers have a very short list of places to smoke, with their own homes being at the top of the list. This ban is the widest-spread urban ban of public smoking to date. It spans over 1,700 parks and miles of beaches and surrounding areas and there are mixed feelings about the issue.

Questions have been raised concerning enforcement of the new ban, suggesting that New York City’s Police have enough to worry about without the poor conduct of smoking ban violators. The bill’s main sponsor, Councilwoman Gale Brewer, is not one of those who are concerned over this matter. The responsibility of enforcement for the new legislation will be placed on The Department of Parks and Recreation, but Brewer suggested this ban will mostly be self enforced, and also enforced by other people in these non-smoking areas.

If this ban is functioning on an honor system and peer pressure, is it even worth passing? Sam Wills, a junior at Salve, thinks not. “I don’t think it will work for one minute,” he said, and suggested that passing the ban in the first place was pointless. Most people interviewed at Salve felt the same way about the ban.

There were, however, mixed results in regards to the right the government has to pass such a ban. Katie Winn, a junior, said, “They have a right.They want to make the environment clean.” Some may say that smoking is not the main problem when it comes to environmental pollution. Whether smoking is the main pollution problem or not, others believe the government is taking their legislation too far. Courteney Hultgren, a senior, said, “[The government does] not own the air in the middle of New York City.”

Whether New York City had a right to pass the ban or not, it has indeed been passed, and the possibility of similar bans being passed in other cities is very real. The ban will be in effect 90 days after Mayor Bloomberg signs the bill. Soon enough, people will see whether this honor-system ban will have been worth the government’s effort.