Reston health advocates — or fun haters, depending on who’s offering the description — have started a movement to ban smoking in public areas operated by the town’s neighborhood association. By Friday evening, an online petition to “expand the current tobacco smoking prohibitions to all outdoor Reston Association Common Areas” had attracted about 60 signatures. The Reston Association represents about 60,000 residents.
If the petitioners’ requests are agreed to by the association and found to comply with Virginia law, lighting up could be banned along more than 55 miles of trails and pathways, on more than 40 tennis courts, and dozens of community gardens, basketball courts and other outdoor facilities.
Current law bans smoking at the association’s indoor facilities and at swimming pools and playgrounds.
Association President Kathleen Driscoll McKee said past efforts to expand the community’s smoking ban were rejected because of concerns over the association’s ability to enforce them.
“Everyone on the board supports the idea of not polluting, and not contributing to the degradation of outdoor air quality,” Driscoll McKee said. “I would say that we’d be in favor of ways to keep people healthy in ways that are appropriate and enforceable.”
The petition’s anonymous crafters have reached out to Berkeley, Calif.-based Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights for help in promoting the cause, according to the organization. They cite scientific evidence connecting second-hand smoke with cancer and other health ailments, in addition to problems with air pollution, fire hazards and litter.
“Cigarette butt and other tobacco product litter … is unsightly and also presents a potential choking hazard to children and pets,” the petition says.
Despite pockets of enthusiastic support for smoking bans in much of Northern Virginia, prohibitions remain unpopular in a state where the tobacco industry has long been a stalwart of the economy.
Judy Maxi is a heroine among smoking-rights advocates for insisting on keeping her Midlothian bar, Caddy’s, friendly to smokers.
Reston petitioners “better go back and read [their] damn history books,” Maxi said. “We were founded on tobacco, and if [tobacco company] Philip Morris pulls out of Virginia, they’ll show us how badly they can hurt the economy.”
