Apartments should be smoke-free

Apartment residents have no protection from their neighbor's drifting tobacco smoke. Unfortunately, tobacco smoke doesn't always stay in the unit where it is generated.

A door-to-door survey of Calabasas apartment residents in 2006 conducted by our organization showed that 36 percent of respondents had secondhand smoke drift into their home in the last year. More than half of those respondents reported that they or someone they live with has a medical condition that gets worse when there is exposure to tobacco smoke.

In that same survey, more than half of the folks who smoke said they would support regulation of smoking in multi-unit housing. And 76 percent of respondents said they would prefer to live in a completely smoke-free building.

A scientific survey in 2007 of 300 Calabasas voters showed some other interesting opinions. Sixtyfive percent of voters surveyed support a law to require apartment buildings to offer nonsmoking sections; 68 percent of respondents favor a law that would require apartment complexes in Calabasas to designate some buildings as entirely smokefree; 76 percent of respondents want strong enforcement against people who move into a nonsmoking apartment and violate the law by smoking inside; and 53 percent currently or formerly living in an apartment in Calabasas had had secondhand smoke drift into their apartment from another apartment or from outside.

People who have chronic illnesses such as asthma, lung or heart disease, people who are cancer survivors, all need protection from tobacco smoke where they live.

And what about people who have small children? They also need the opportunity to live in a non-smoking environment.

Councilmember Wolfson suggested a compromise: nonsmoking buildings and smokingpermitted buildings. Council-members Groveman and Maurer agreed.

The proposed ordinance is still in process. We hope the opinions expressed in your editorial are not set in stone. Esther Schiller, Newbury Park Executive Director Smokefree Air For Everyone (SAFE) and the Smokefree Apartment House Registry