Santa Cruz considers banning smoking on Pacific Avenue, Beach S...

City leaders on Tuesday will consider banning smoking on Pacific Avenue, Beach Street, the wharf and within 25 feet of commercial doorways, windows and air ducts, in response to what council members say are increasing complaints from the public about cigarette-butt litter and the dangers of secondhand smoke.

[Soylent Green]

Yeees!! Soon downtown Santa Cruz will look like downtown Los Gatos or even Scotts Valley...if you ignore all of the other toxic wastes!

[Steve]

It's about time they banned smoking in public places. If you need your nicotine "fix" get a patch or chew and swallow. Just stop smelling up the place.

[look at the tolerance]

typical. one comment attacks the middle class folks who just want to enjoy life in a nice little town. And the other wants to impinge people's freedom to engage in a legal activity. so much tolerance in Santa Cruz, really, there's tons.

[The Scream]

Don't pass a law if you CAN'T ENFORCE IT. What are they going to do, give TICKETS to the street people who smoke? Tickets that they will NEVER PAY? No judge is going to send someone to jail for SMOKING.

So we'll have a whole class of people who'll smoke ANYWAY because there are no real consequences for them THAT THEY CARE ABOUT.

All this assumes that the COPS even have TIME to enforce it. It's such a BS thing I doubt that they will. UNLESS THEY DON'T LIKE YOU.

[Sykes]

Ben Dover wrote:

who's the hot looking blonde?

She's not that hot when you consider she is essentially a walking ash tray. Notice cigarette butt in her hand.

[RobtA]

Smoking is concentrated in some areas, such as in front of the Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company. It seems to me that the smokers are a mix of visitors, street life, and workers on break. The main problem is that on Pacific Avenue, the limited wind circulation blows the smoke lengthwise along the sidewalk.

I would be interested to learn whether the percentage of smokers in an "enviro-veg" place such as Santa Cruz is more or less than in some random place.

[Gudrun]

Great! Next we should ban hobos. I'm sick of getting pies stolen right off my windowsill.

[Stray Cat]

At long last...finally the City Council wakes up! Every time I go downtown, I reeked of smoke afterwards, even when avoiding the hapless and addicted casual smoker. I often had to launder my clothes immediately, it was so bad. Maybe the proposed desal plant won't be needed after all...but drought or no drought, I am not giving up the quiet pleasure of ridding my clothes of the cancer-causing odor of second-hand cigarette smoke!
Next on the agenda: Sober up, everybody!

[Marie]

Why do you have to keep making more and more
laws...why not ban hamburgers that make people fat. If they had some ashtrays or garbage cans they might not have to clean up so much. I don't
smoke but I sure get tired of hearing government
officials talk and make laws about smoking in the
outdoors. Find some other way to earn your living.

[Rich in Rio]

Sweet Jesus it's about time. I was on Pacific on Sunday with my daughter and it was awful.

Your " right " to smoke stop the second you force me to partake in your deadly habit.

Both of my parents died from smoking so I admittedly am a bit hostile to smoking in general.

But we have to do something about people so clueless they go about puffing and polluting our otherwise lovely air here in Santa Cruz.

Smoking in public means the public ends up smoking without their consent. It is a clear violation of personal space and personal freedom.

Yes, my personal space and personal freedoms trump yours when it comes to health issues.

We don't let people defecate on the sidewalk because it would be a health hazard.

Dogs are banned from downtown to prevent potential health hazards. Yet we still allow thoughtless morons to violate the personal airspace of others.

The air pollution, ground pollution, use of toxic chemicals in tobacco manufacturing, along with what should be common courtesy are reasons enough to force the small percentage of clueless nitwits who smoke to do it in the privacy of their own space.

Maybe we should all start smoking big fat stogies and walk up and down the street until action is taken.

This is not an issue of taking away the rights of the few. This is a matter of protecting the rights of the vast majority.

Having said all of what I have said....I believe I am going straight to hell for agreeing with those morons Rotkin and Coonerty.

I hate it when those guys are actually on the right side of an issue.

[DJC]

Good idea. Send the smokers in to adjacent neighborhoods.

[Santa Cruzan]

Brian - I agree with you. Poor baby Ryan. Who the heck is going to enforce this rule. The police can't enforce any of the other rules downtown now.

Wake up Ryan. Get a job.

[Mark Wagner]

No...she's hot Sykes!

[whattha]

No smoking, no sex , no drugs , no rocknroll , no fun. I think these controlling christian parasites should all be banned from Santa Cruz. Also the blonde is hot as hell especially since she is smoking. She is a non conformist, that makes her even more sexy.

[think about it]

If you can't drink a beer or smoke a joint on Pacific Avenue and Beach Street, why the hell should you be able to smoke your nasty cancer stick, which everyone else has to inhale?

Smoking regularly is a nasty habit, anyway - stained teeth and fingers, ashtray breath, cancer and heart disease.

They out to reduce the numnber of places that can sell tobacco, as well.

[David]

Personally, I am opposed to any kind of anti smoking law, but this one if put in place will save some of these kids lives. since they will have to make the decision to smoke and leave the area or to not smoke to keep their position on the Mall. It could be a good thing.

The real reason that I am opposed to any kind of anti smoking law is that if this is a "FREE" country, people should be able to decide for themselves whether they want to kill themselves this way or not. I've never smoked, but if someone wants to, so be it.

[Marie]

It doesn't matter that you "CAN'T ENFORCE IT." After a while people will get the idea and eventually smoking in those areas will just not be done.

[sc guy]

start enforcing the litter law and write a ticket for these losers crushing their butts on the sidewalk. A few $500 fines will curb this habit.

I used to work downtown and there is a crew out every morning sweeping (actually high pressure washing) all of the cig butts away.

Maybe they should also halt the clean-up for a few months so people would see how prevalant the problem is.

[Big Mike]

Some of the city's best nightclubs use Pacific as their smoking lounge. Perhaps an exception can be made for the areas in front of clubs such as Glue Blagoon, Motiv, or Cattlecyst?

I don't smoke any more, but when I did, I could never understand how smokers wouldn't take care of their butts. I always carried a pocket ashtray and kept my butts, chose places to smoke that didn't draft onto people (impossible, like in front of the clubs, but they were smoking, too).

We need less prohibition, not more. But I gotta figure that some smokers are partially to blame for this. Who wouldn't want fresh air?

[Local]

A more serious problem is the nuts who toss their burning cigarettes out of their car windows, especially during fire season. A vigorous program of confiscating cars could end that.