GARDEN GROVE : Smoking Study to Focus on Workplace

The City Council has instructed the city staff to return with a report on smoking in businesses and workplaces in the city.

Mark E. Bradshaw, who designs computer software for a Garden Grove firm, wrote the council asking officials to consider a smoking policy that would require businesses to establish no-smoking areas. He made his plea in person at Monday night’s council meeting.

He was supported by Kirk Wilkes of the American Cancer Society, who called secondhand smoke “the silent killer.”

“It’s not a smokers’ rights issue or a nonsmokers’ rights issue,” Wilkes said. “It’s a health issue.”

Wilkes suggested that the city poll its residents on the matter, arguing that “no more than 25% of the citizens of Garden Grove are smokers.”

In 1989, the council on a 3-2 vote rejected a proposal to require restaurants to set aside no-smoking areas. Mayor W. E. (Walt) Donovan and Councilman Frank Kessler, both smokers, were joined by nonsmoking Councilman Raymond T. Littrell in defeating the proposal as “too much government interference in business.”

Backers of regulations on smoking are Councilmen J. Tilman Williams and Robert F. Dinsen. Dinsen, a longtime smoker, quit the habit four months ago “after some 50-odd years.”

The study will include what other cities have done to regulate smoking, as well as a survey of local businesses.