Greece: Smoking Ban in City Parks and Rec Areas Expected To Be Introduced Tonight

Source from:  Conor Morris 11/03/2014

Athens city recreation areas, including parks, outdoor recreation facilities, restrooms, pavilions and athletic playing fields could soon be tobacco-free if an ordinance amending city code is approved by City Council. The ordinance will be introduced for first reading on Monday night (tonight).

During City Council's committee meetings last Monday, council member Steve Patterson unveiled a possible ordinance banning the use of tobacco products in the city's recreation areas. Those tobacco products would include cigarettes, cigars, pipes and chewing tobacco. E-cigarettes use, however, would still be considered legal.

Local parent Thaden Brient initially introduced the idea at a City Council meeting in October. Brient expressed concerns about cigarette litter and smoke being around his 9-year-old daughter, who uses local playgrounds regularly.

The ordinance would also amend the city's code for littering offenses to add cigarette and tobacco products to the list of what constitutes litter in public rights-of-way.

"If this passes and as we post this, that would need to be very clear to smokers, is where they were allowed to smoke," council member Michele Papai said.

Patterson said that signs declaring the tobacco ban would be installed at parks and recreational areas across the city if the ordinance is adopted.

The ordinance would also ban tobacco use on hiking trails, as well as in parking lots for recreational areas within the city. Patterson confirmed that people would still be allowed to smoke cigarettes in their cars as they sit in those parking lots, however.

Athens County has a smoke-free park resolution that was enacted in 2010, Patterson said, but Athens city parks currently only have a no-smoking policy, which is not enforced by any entity and is not codified in city law.

Council members said that code enforcement officers, police, meter tenants, sanitary litter control officers and others assigned by the city-service safety director will be able to enforce the proposed tobacco ban in Athens city parks and recreation areas.

Council member Jennifer Cochran provided some context to the possible ordinance.

"This will make our parks more healthful places for families and for citizens to be, and to enjoy healthy activities together rather than having to endure secondhand smoke," she said. "We know that smoking kills more people (yearly) than car accidents and more than murders and homicides and suicides all combined, so it's proven that smoking is dangerous, and we would like to not see it in our parks… and have our children seeing that activity associated with an otherwise very healthy activity of playing at the playground."

Patterson said this is a timely component to the possible tobacco ban in city recreational areas as a result of OU moving forward with its smoke-free campus initiatives in the 2015-2016 academic year.

If the recreational area tobacco ban is passed, Athens will be the fourth city in Ohio to have a tobacco-free or smoke-free park ordinance. Enditem