The federal government wants to ban smoking in public housing nationwide. Not just in lobbies, stairwells, laundry rooms and other common areas, but inside apartments, too.
The federal government wants to ban smoking in public housing nationwide. Not just in lobbies, stairwells, laundry rooms and other common areas, but inside apartments, too.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which announced the proposed rule change Thursday, said it would apply to more than 700,000 public-housing units across the country. That’s probably about how many angry arguments smokers and their defenders could make for why this is a bad idea.
But the counterarguments are more persuasive, including protecting the health of nonsmokers — children especially — reducing property damage, saving money on cleaning, painting and maintaining apartments, and preventing fires.
Over the 60-day public comment period, smokers will doubtless invoke the freedom argument: the right to consume legal carcinogens in one’s castle. But to paraphrase a quote often attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes: Your rights end where my nose begins. The problem with your cigarette is that it sends secondhand smoke through your walls and doors and into your neighbors’ noses, and their children’s. It stinks up their couches and rugs, and everybody’s hallways. And it causes lung disease and cancer in nonsmokers.
The HUD proposal seems carefully drawn to avoid accusations of overreaching and involved months of public review and meetings with tenants. It is not draconian — smoking infractions, to be policed by tenants and employees, would be treated as nuisance violations and would not lead to evictions.
Many public housing agencies across the country have already instituted voluntary smoke-free policies; those that haven’t would have to work closely with residents to ease into the new regime. Doing this right would help address the concern that the government is simply adding another rule that is hard to enforce — public-housing agencies already have enough trouble tackling litter, drugs, illegal guns and illegal tenants.
Getting rid of smoking will not be instantaneous or effortless. But it shouldn’t stop housing agencies from trying. The anti-smoking movement was parodied years ago by the humorist Garrison Keillor (“The last cigarette smokers in America were located in a box canyon south of Donner Pass in the High Sierra by two federal tobacco agents in a helicopter who spotted the little smoke puffs just before noon.”)
A lot has changed — and many lives have been prolonged — since then. Tobacco bans by public authorities used to be a startling and provocative idea; Mayor Michael Bloomberg drew much fire in New York City by outlawing smoking in restaurants and bars. Now in a city of easier breathing and increased longevity, his efforts are seen as a solid legacy.
HUD wants to go further than that, and in the name of good sense and health, it should.
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