Del Mar Voters to Get a Say on Citywide Smoking Ban

The Del Mar City Council placed a proposal for the nation’s most restrictive no-smoking ordinance on the November ballot Monday night.

The vote was 4-1, with Mayor Lew Hopkins opposed--because he favored immediate adoption of the measure.

Richard Roe, a former smoker and anti-smoking activist, introduced the Roe Health Initiative more than a year ago, announcing that he planned to place the issue before Del Mar voters. Roe said he envisions the small seaside community as a pioneer in the “smokeless society” he envisions.

The initiative measure, which must be adopted by the Del Mar City Council exactly as written or put up for a vote at a special or scheduled election, would ban smoking in all public gathering places, including beaches, parks, restaurants, stores, sidewalks, streets and offices. Three “designated smoking areas” would be created for those who want to smoke within the city limits. Residents, he said, would still be free to smoke in their homes and yards.

Roe said that no enforcement provisions are included because “the measure will be self-enforcing, not requiring any additional city personnel.” He pointed out that predictions that San Francisco’s tough no-smoking ordinance would be unenforceable proved to be wrong.

After testing the waters in a postcard poll early last year, Roe said, he was optimistic about his proposal’s chances. He said that 60% of the 124 Del Mar residents he queried favored his plan to ban smoking in all public places, indoors and out.

He filed his intent to circulate initiative petitions in August but waited until Nov. 20--the annual Great American Smokeout--to begin his campaign. He sent letters to all Del Mar households asking residents to circulate petitions among neighbors and friends.

The effort was not an instant success, he said, but he managed to gather and submit 611 signatures early this year. The county registrar of voters certified 417 of the signatures as valid, barely above the 408 needed to qualify the initiative for a vote.

Roe defends his proposal as constitutional, despite challenges that he said are directed by the American Tobacco Institute, the public relations organization for the tobacco industry.

Among the major opponents of the measure is Alijandra Mogilner, a former aide to ex-County Supervisor Patrick Boarman, who calls Roe’s contention that smoking outdoors is a health hazard “ridiculous.” In a letter opposing the initiative, she quoted former Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi as saying that, in an autopsy, he can identify a person who has lived in Los Angeles more than five years but that he cannot identify a smoker.

“If you barbecue during the summer using commercial charcoal briquettes, you are adding more poisonous gases to our environment roasting one chicken than a smoker does by smoking dozens of packs of cigarettes,” Mogilner contends.