San Francisco people who are living in apartment buildings with a few or a lot more models will no for a longer period be permitted to smoke tobacco inside their houses — but they can even now smoke cannabis, below a new ordinance the Board of Supervisors handed on Tuesday.
The board voted 10-1, with Supervisor Dean Preston dissenting. San Francisco is now the biggest metropolis in the country to ban tobacco smoking in apartment structures.
“One should really not have to stay in a single-family property to be in a position to breathe clean up air,” explained outgoing President Norman Yee, who wrote the ordinance. “That suitable must exist for each single man or woman and relatives, no matter of wherever they reside or what their cash flow is.”
The ordinance — which also bars e-cigarettes — is supposed to secure inhabitants from secondhand smoke. The first proposal sought to ban inhabitants from cigarette smoking cannabis in their apartments, but supervisors voted 8-3 — with Yee, Gordon Mar and Ahsha Safaí opposed — to exclude hashish from the ordinance.
The try to ban indoor cannabis smoking infuriated hashish activists who said the legislation would choose absent their only lawful location to smoke. It’s unlawful underneath state law to smoke hashish in public spots.
“Unlike tobacco smokers who could nonetheless leave their residences to step out to the suppress or smoke in other permitted outside smoking cigarettes locations, cannabis consumers would have no these legal solutions,” claimed Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who wrote the modification to exempt hashish.
The ordinance must move a next vote of the board subsequent 7 days, but that is mostly a formality. Then, the mayor need to indicator it, and the new law would go into effect 30 days afterwards.
Cigarette smoking cigarettes and cannabis is banned in frequent areas these kinds of as stairwells and hallways, and lots of landlords ban tenants from smoking cigarettes inside entirely. The new regulation can take it a phase even further by creating it unlawful for any individual living in a multi-device constructing — which includes private condominium structures, minimal-cash flow structures identified as single-room-occupancy lodges, and condominiums — from smoking indoors.
San Francisco now joins 63 California towns — which include Alameda, Berkeley, Santa Clara and Santa Rosa — and counties with these kinds of a ban.
Even though these towards the ban argued that it infringed on their legal rights inside their residences, supporters claimed it is crucial to guard the health of nonsmokers — significantly minimal-earnings people who are living in dense condominium structures. According to the Centers for Disease Command and Prevention, cigarettes kill more than 480,000 people for every year in the United States, like far more than 41,000 deaths induced by publicity to secondhand smoke.
The Division of General public Wellness will be responsible for enforcing the new legislation. Under the ordinance, the section will have to initially check out to educate violators and enable smokers quit. Repeat offenders could be fined $1,000 a day — but could not be evicted for any violation.
“I’m pretty concerned about people’s legal rights, but I’m also involved about people’s overall health,” Safaí claimed. “The science and the information (on secondhand smoke) is incontrovertible.”
Preston urged his colleagues to mail the ordinance again to committee for more assessment, so they could far better realize the impact that it would have on San Francisco people. He was worried the new law would typically be applied versus extensive-term tenants, who experienced been grandfathered into leases prior to a landlord imposed their own no-smoking cigarettes ban.
Fred Sherburn-Zimmer, executive director of Housing Rights Committee, was in the same way involved about how the new legislation could effects aged residents who experienced few other options but to smoke inside of.
“It’s not simple to give up cigarette smoking, and we see elderly tenants all the time who have a challenging time having down the stairs,” she explained. “A new coverage from the metropolis is not heading to assist someone with their habit.”
Preston’s ask for to keep on the laws to a later on day was denied by a 6-5 vote.
Shawn Richards, co-operator of the hashish dispensary Berner’s on Haight, claimed banning cannabis and tobacco cigarette smoking indoors would take absent people’s “free will and rights.” He was also nervous how this new ban will disproportionately impact people of coloration who dwell in multi-unit housing.
“These supervisors need to have to tackle the actual difficulties, and not concerns that dictate people’s actions and whereabouts and how we perform in society,” he claimed.
Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff members writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani