The D.C. Council is eyeing an extension of the city’s anti-tobacco prohibitions into public space, allowing all private property owners to ban smoking outside their buildings — including the public sidewalk.
The proposed legislation, a major expansion of the District’s smoke-free law, sets 18 as the legal age to purchase or possess tobacco products, requires retailers to post signs warning of the dangers of smoking, ramps up enforcement of sales to minors and authorizes smoking bans up to 25 feet from the wall of any private property — residential or commercial.
The goal of that last provision is to disperse packs of smokers who congregate outside office buildings, said Councilman Phil Mendelson, who introduced the bill with Councilwoman Yvette Alexander. A 25-foot ban, under the measure, could encompass an adjacent sidewalk.
“I want the owner of the property to be able to say ‘no’ if he wants to,” Mendelson said. “We’re not prohibiting smoking. We’re saying the owner can say no, even if it’s on the sidewalk.”
But property owners are unclear whether they could legally boot smokers off the sidewalk and into the street, said W. Shaun Pharr, senior vice president of government affairs with the D.C. Apartment and Office Building Association.
“We have nothing but good feelings for the intent here, but it’s public space,” Pharr said. “We don’t really have the right or the authority or control over that public space between the wall of the building and the sidewalk. I just think there’s some legal ambiguity we’ll still need to clear to up.”
John Banzhaf, a George Washington University law professor and longtime anti-smoking activist, said the District was legally in the right.
“This is aimed at the so-called congregation around the door,” the professor said. “That’s the real problem. I don’t see people zigzagging down the street.”
Also under the bill, retailers nabbed selling tobacco products to minors face fines and possible jail time plus mandatory license suspension or revocation. Minors caught attempting to purchase cigarettes, or in possession of a tobacco product, face fines as high as $500, up to 25 hours of community service and forfeiture of their smokes.
The provision will be difficult to enforce, said Pete Fisher of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids.
“We think the burden should primarily be on the people who sell tobacco,” Fisher said, “not on the people who are addicted and buy the tobacco products.”
