Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS) – Smoking anything other than medically-prescribed marijuana at San Francisco street fairs, festivals and other outdoor events held on city property would be banned under new legislation before the Board of Supervisors. Supervisor Eric Mar said he introduced the proposal because of the health impacts of secondhand smoke when people light up in public. “It’s widely known that secondhand smoke is responsible for as many as 73,000 deaths among non-smokers each year in the United States, and there is no safe level of exposure,” he said.

Tuesday night the city council sought to expand that prohibition and voted 4-2 to ban smoking for all new tenants of apartments and condos inside their residences - with one exception. "I really don't think they should be telling people what to do if they are paying for the place they're living in," Jones said. Other cities have taken similar measures. Pasadena will make all apartments, condos and townhouses smoke-free by 2013 - a move Santa Monica is also looking into.

SANTA MONICA (CBS) — Santa Monica smokers may be breaking the law if they light up in the privacy of their own homes, after the City Council approved a more restrictive anti-smoking law Tuesday night. The ordinance would prohibit smoking for new tenants in multi-unit housing and force existing residents to declare their apartments and condos as smoking or non-smoking units, according to the Santa Monica Daily Press. If smokers neglect to designate their units, they lose the right to light up at home. The City Council also asked for a drop dead date after which every unit in Santa...

Wisconsin's workplace smoking ban turned 2 years old Thursday, and despite critics' fears, overall sales in the hospitality industry are up slightly. The Wisconsin Restaurant Association's Pete Hanson said Wisconsin taverns and eateries followed national economic trends and largely were unaffected by the ban. ~snip Based on state tax collection data, Hanson said restaurant and tavern sales overall increased 1% in 2010 and 2% in 2011, mirroring national trends. Conversely, the subcategory of bars and taverns saw around a 4% decrease during that time, but Hanson notes that trend has been ongoing for many years. Overall, Hanson said the smoking...

It’s bad news for smokers and tobacco shops alike. Long regarded as a cheaper option for nicotine lovers, roll-your-own cigarettes are set to be a thing of the past as a new law is introduced by President Barack Obama. In coming days he will sign a federal highway bill with a section defining any business with roll-your-own cigarette machines as a tobacco manufacturer and upping taxes on the its products, the Chicago Sun Times reported. The move will come as a blow to smokers without brand loyalty who for years have been able to feed their habits at a fraction...

Terrie Hall has toured the country, speaking at schools and community gatherings about her firsthand experience with smoking-related illness. But the 51-year-old throat cancer survivor ventured beyond her comfort zone when she appeared in a national television ad, in which she's seen putting in false teeth and covering her stoma with a scarf. "That was kind of hard to do," Hall said. "I had never taken my wig off in public before." Hall said she participated in the ad because of her strong belief in its message that tobacco use not only kills, but causes lingering illness that can affect...