City Outlaws Machines for Young Smokers

Underage smokers in Duarte will soon have to kick the cigarette vending machine habit.

Duarte’s City Council last week voted to ban tobacco product vending machines in places accessible to minors. Duarte is the first city in California to enact such a law, a spokesman for the tobacco industry said.

The new ordinance applies to all places open to people under the age of 18. So far, the city has sent notices to 17 establishments, all businesses. They include motels, restaurants, coffee houses, bowling alleys and auto repair shops.

The law takes effect Dec. 28, but merchants will have until April, 1990, to move their cigarette machines out of areas frequented by minors.

Councilman John Van Doren introduced the ordinance as part of Duarte’s ongoing push for a relatively smoke-free and healthy environment. After a public hearing last week, the measure passed 3-2.

The new law’s champions, like Councilman John Hitt, said it will help bolster Duarte’s image as a “city of health.”

“Tobacco is a chemical that is known to be a serious health threat and addictive, and yet we allow unsupervised access to it by minors,” he said.

Mayor John Fasana said the law will prevent young children from picking up the habit in the first place.

But council members Ginny Joyce and Jim Kirchner, who voted against the measure, said it would be more effective to educate young people about the dangers of smoking and to enforce the existing law that prohibits selling tobacco to minors.

“I feel that we are overstepping our boundaries by getting into the moral issues of smoking versus not smoking,” Joyce said. “It is inappropriate for us as a city to legislate that sort of thing.”

Kirchner said it is unfortunate that people smoke, but he argued the new law won’t help smokers break the habit.

“Removing the machines is not going to impact the kids,” he said.

Sylvia Acuna, speaking on behalf of the local Chamber of Commerce, agreed. She also said the city shouldn’t tell businesses what to sell.

Peter Bissias, co-owner of Conrad’s Restaurant, complained that the council’s action could cost him money. He said the machine in his establishment doesn’t take in much cash, but he worried that customers who leave to buy cigarettes may end up going elsewhere for dinner. He said none of his cigarette machine customers appears to be under 18.

On the other hand, Fred Riecke, general manager of Columbia Bowl, said the ban won’t affect his business. He already has moved his machine from the public concourse to the lounge--open only to people 21 and over.

Duarte, population 22,000, is the second city in the nation to ban cigarette machines in areas accessible to minors, said Jim Vari, legislative analyst for the Tobacco Merchants’ Assn. in Princeton, N.J. He said King County, Washington, has a similar law on the books, and two towns in Minnesota have even stricter ordinances which ban the machines altogether.