Some interesting articles, to broaden our views 
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/Stories/0,1413,206~22097~2828155,00.html
Nisha Varghese, health projects coordinator for the AYC, said the ban is important in a city like Monterey Park, which has a majority of Asian Americans. Studies show one in four Asians and Pacific Islanders are smokers, she said.
The ban, which takes effect next month, expands a state law prohibiting smoking within 25 feet of a playground. Smoking is now banned entirely from all parks except for parking lots and public sidewalks.
A study requested by the Parks and Recreation Commission in February and conducted by the AYC showed 83.8 percent of 636 residents surveyed support a ban on smoking in parks, Varghese said.
Nancy Arcuri, who publishes The Citizen’s Voice, a community newspaper, was the only Monterey Park resident to speak against the ban at the meeting.
“Smokers have the same right to use the park as people who exercise there,” Arcuri said.
The council voted unanimously for the smoking ban.
Councilman Frank Venti said groups using parks for exercise and recreation should have the right to do so without inhaling secondhand smoke.
“You and I, as taxpayers, will pay the hospital bills for those people smoking freely in the park,” Venti said.
Mayor Mike Eng said the city should take things a step further and start education programs for youths to teach them the dangers of smoking.
Councilman David Lau also suggested anti-smoking workshops sponsored by the city.
The ban makes Monterey Park the eighth city in Southern California to ban smoking from parks, joining Pasadena, Baldwin Park, El Monte, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Redlands and Los Angeles, which bans smoking 25 feet from any play area, including sports fields. Across the state, 10 other cities have banned smoking from parks, according to the AYC.
In other action, the council appointed three people to a newly created environmental commission that would advise the council on environmental issues in the city.
Environmental lawyer Thomas Vandenburg, retiree Madeline Detmers and Mark Keppel High School student Dianna Lu were appointed to the commission, the first of its kind in Los Angeles County.
http://sfindependent.com/article/index.cfm/i/012605n_smoking
Smoking banned in parks
By Jo Stanley | Staff Writer
Published on
URL: http://www.examiner.com/article/index.cfm/i/012605n_smoking
E-mail this story | Print this page
Lighting up in city parks will soon be illegal, after the Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 on Tuesday to ban smoking in parks and other outdoor areas owned by The City.
“The environmental impacts alone give this particular piece of legislation justification,” said sponsoring Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, noting that cigarette butts left lying around eventually send toxins into the ground and water, and children playing in parks are exposed to second-hand smoke.
Scofflaws can be fined up to $100 for a first offense, $200 for a second violation and $500 for each additional violation. Pasadena, Santa Monica and Beverly Hills are among the cities with similar bans.
Supervisors Jake McGoldrick, Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin opposed the measure, with McGoldrick and Mirkarimi both saying they had concerns about the law’s effects on immigrants who may now gather to socialize and smoke in certain public parks but would be constrained under the prohibition.
“It just has this undertone of elitism,” Mirkarimi said.
Mirkarimi also made a late bid to remove an exemption for city golf courses. It failed, 7-4.
Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, whose District 7 includes the newly refurbished Harding Park golf course, said he feared that extending the ban there would keep away visitors and pro golfers expected to generate money at upcoming PGA tournaments.
“Many of these golfers are chain smokers,” Elsbernd said.
Elsbernd and Alioto-Pier contend that golf course staff members keep the greens “immaculate” and so avoid any environmental damage caused by discarded cigarettes.
Alioto-Pier, whose aunt Angela Alioto championed The City’s smoking ban in bars years ago while a city supervisor, said new signs to alert the public would be paid for using anti-tobacco funds.
The board must vote one more time on the proposed ordinance.
And a column:
Lighten Up, America!
Do fat people belong in public parks?
By Jacob Sullum
Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry offers several rationales for her ban on smoking in city parks. People leave cigarette butts in sandboxes, she says, and smoking causes air pollution.
But L.A. already has a law against littering, and tobacco smoke in the open air hardly seems like a pressing environmental concern. Unless Perry plans to shut down all automobile traffic and industrial activity in Los Angeles, her zero-tolerance approach to pollution is strangely selective.
Still, Perry does have at least one compelling justification for her ban, which received preliminary approval from a unanimous city council earlier this month. “When kids see adults smoking in a family-friendly place like a park,” she said, “it normalizes smoking and causes it to be approved behavior.”
In other words, people smoking in public are a bad influence on children, who may be encouraged to follow their unhealthy example. Perry’s observation can be extended to other areas of public health.
The day before the Los Angeles City Council voted on the smoking ban, Surgeon General David Satcher released a “Call to Action” warning that Americans are way too fat and getting fatter every day. “Overweight and obesity may soon cause as much preventable disease and death as cigarette smoking,” he said, estimating that 300,000 people die each year because they weigh too much.
Satcher said corpulence-related disease and disability cost the country $117 billion last year. And the odds are that you are part of this problem: Three-fifths of American adults are overweight, less than a third get the exercise the federal government says they should, and almost no one complies with the dietary recommendations of the USDA’s Food Guide Pyramid.
Given the huge social cost, how much you eat and exercise can no longer be seen as purely private choices. “People tend to think of overweight and obesity as strictly a personal matter,” Satcher said, “but there is much that communities can and should do to address these problems.”
Banning fat people from public parks, where they set a bad example for the kids, is an obvious first step. Ideally, though, we should be moving toward a world in which no child is exposed to potential role models who normalize obesity and cause overeating to be approved behavior.
I’m not talking about a complete ban on obesity. People would still be free to be fat in the privacy of their own homes (provided they have no children); they would just not be allowed to go out in public until they slimmed down.
Perhaps that solution strikes you as extreme. But surely it’s not too much to expect that officials charged with protecting the public health exemplify the good habits we are trying to inculcate in our youth.
“Overweight and obesity are among the most pressing new health challenges we face today,” says Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson, who could stand to lose a few pounds himself. At least Joe Califano, when he held a similar position in the Carter administration, had the decency to stop smoking before he started campaigning against cigarettes.
The entertainment industry also has a role to play. Just as it is considered socially irresponsible to project positive images of smokers, the creators of the movies and TV shows our children watch should think twice before portraying fat characters who are smart, cool, popular, or otherwise admirable.
To be fair, Hollywood generally has done a pretty good job on this score, bringing us leading actors who (unlike the general population) are overwhelmingly thin. But there are exceptions.
What sort of message does it send to our young people that a parade of slim characters leaves NYPD Blue under unfavorable circumstances, while the chunky Andy Sipowicz remains at the center of the show? And what was Fox thinking when it released Shallow Hal, which sends the dangerous message that fat women can be happy and loved?
The positive portrayal of portly people in cartoon comedies, a genre favored by children, is especially unconscionable. Immune to the biological forces that affect flesh-and blood people, long-running, lovable cartoon characters such as Homer Simpson and South Park’s Chef remain healthy despite their obesity.
At this time of year, one other baneful role model inevitably springs to mind. I just hope you didn’t leave out a plate of cookies for him. That’s the last thing he needs.
© Copyright 2001 by Creators Syndicate Inc.
Good arguments in these articles I think. Both in favour and no in favour.
PS. I’m not trying to push this discussion to one about obesitas, so start a new one if you want for that please :wise:
I enjoyed it when it was smoking in bars as well, I admit 
Great conversations and debates imho.
and god forbid it be practical…