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Tighter smoking restrictions introduced 

The City Council on Tuesday introduced an ordinance strengthening anti-smoking regulations, roughly a year after implementing the first set of citywide restrictions.

The ordinance, which faces a final vote next month, would ban smoking on patios and balconies of condominium complexes and apartment buildings. Lighting up in common areas in condo buildings would also be prohibited, according to the tentative ordinance.

While council members were initially wary of imposing any regulations in condominiums, they said Tuesday that they had to consider the quality-of-life issues of tenants who are repeatedly exposed to second-hand smoke from neighboring units.

"At some point we have to factor in the quality of life of other residents," said City Councilman John Drayman. . . .

In January, the American Lung Assn. gave Glendale an A for the second year in a row for its tobacco control policies.

Still, several residents said they were frustrated to repeatedly see smoking in public space, especially parks and outdoor eating areas.

"I live across the street from Wilson Mini Park," Serge Lazar said. "But I can never go to Wilson Mini Park because everyone smokes around there."

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Woman Falls Asleep While Smoking, Lights Apt. on Fire 

PUEBLO - A cigarette butt was the cause of a fire that destroyed a 6-unit apartment building Friday afternoon.

The fire broke out at the intersection of Amherst and Oxford St. in Pueblo, just a couple of blocks from the State Fair Grounds at about 2:00pm. . . .

"She stated she was asleep and had been smoking in bed," he explained. The woman was transported to St. Mary Corwin Hospital with burns. Her condition is unknown.

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Working toward smoke-free living 

An initiative to create more apartments where smoking is prohibited in Columbia and Greene counties is quietly but concertedly growing in the area and officials say landlords and tenants are becoming increasingly receptive to the idea.

A partner of the Healthcare Consortium, and funded by the New York state Tobacco Control program, the Rip Van Winkle Tobacco-Free Action of Columbia and Greene Counties has been trying to reduce the influence of tobacco in the region since 2001.

Program Director Karen dePeyster and Communications Coordinator Lisa Heintz say their initiative is not out to change laws but to make other choices available to non smokers and those who want to live in second-hand smoke-free environments.

The program's most visible accomplishment was getting the management of the Crosswinds workforce housing complex on Harry Howard Avenue to designate six of its nine buildings smoke free.

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Pasadena to explore possibility of citywide smoking ban  

On Monday, the council's Public Safety Committee discussed a long-proposed ban on smoking in apartment buildings, and Councilman Steve Haderlein asked the staff to find out whether the city has the legal authority to put a full smoking ban into place.

Pasadena passed a ban on outdoor smoking in most public areas in 2008, and at the time pledged to consider the apartment restrictions within the next year.

Haderlein, who is the chair of the committee, said he wasn't sure he would support an outright ban, but said he would like to know if it is an option.

"Something that broad and dramatic, we'd really have to go to our citizens and see if it is what they wanted," said Haderlein.

The discussion on extending the restrictions beyond apartment and condo units stemmed from concerns by committee members that it would be unfair to target smokers there, while ignoring smokers who live in single-family homes.

Haderlein noted, for example, that his neighbor is a smoker, and that he can sometimes smell the smoke drifting in through his kitchen window. . . .

Nancy Sagetellian, who owns a condo on South Lake Avenue, spoke Monday and said in a later interview that she was evicted from her apartment for complaining about her neighbor's smoking.

She said that since she bought a condo, she had hoped to avoid the problem, but she has a smoker living in a unit below her.

"I thought as a homeowner I'd have rights, but I haven't been able to find anybody who can help me," said Sagetellian.

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SENTINEL EDITORIAL: Keene’s housing authority takes a stance on tobacco’s costs 

To the public's costs of smoking -- tobacco-related medical care being chief among them -- add the cost of cleaning up after smokers. Following examples set elsewhere, the Keene Housing Authority says it will ban smoking in its properties later this year in a move that could reduce its apartment clean-up costs by as much as $50,000 annually. . . .

For all the reputed pleasure that tobacco brings its users (about 20 percent of the housing authority's adult tenants smoke) the habit literally stinks. Hence the added costs of readying apartments for the next occupants.

The housing authority's ban, which goes into effect April 1 but gives current smokers a six-month grace period, has financial logic. It also makes sense from a public policy standpoint, just as laws against smoking in bars and other places of indoor public accommodation make sense; it's not a habit that deserves to be shared, nor one that other people should have to pay for.

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Commentary: No-smoking sign goes up at Pennsylvania Ave. condos in Los Gatos  

NO SMOKING: The Homeowners Association of the condominiums at 600 Pennsylvania Ave. has declared its entire complex a no-smoking area. If anyone still wants to smoke, he/she must now be outside the white walls surrounding the complex, along Overlook, Wissahickon or Laurel roads.

The measure was recently incorporated into the association bylaws after years of smoking complaints, and the increased awareness of smoking-caused cancer. Bill Hastings, a member of the board of directors of the complex, is our informant. The board is hoping that other associations will follow suit.

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Discarded cigarette caused blaze at Atherton Woods  

A $250,000 fire at the Atherton Woods apartment complex Thursday afternoon was caused by a carelessly discarded cigarette that ignited combustible materials on a second-floor balcony, officials said Friday evening.

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LETTER: You smell smoke? Follow your nose, not the realtor 

I am writing in regard to the case of the condo owner who lost her suit over second-hand smoke making her asthma worse. When my husband and I were looking at a house in Lexington, I kept telling the realtor that I smelled smoke. . . .

smoking a cigarette. The realtor must have known that his client was there, but chose to bend the truth, as it were. My husband and I quickly left, laughing our heads off.

The defendant should have gone with her hunch about the smoke she detected, checked the surrounding condos for resident smokers, and then made her decision to buy based on real fact, not the fiction she said the realtor was feeding her. I am surprised she spent nearly two years compromising her health the way she did.

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• Woman loses second-hand smoke case 

A Suffolk County jury yesterday rejected a Boston woman's suit contending that her real estate broker misled her by concealing that a downstairs neighbor smoked cigarettes, in one of the first such lawsuits to go to trial in Massachusetts.

After deliberating less than an hour, the 14-member jury sided with the broker from Gibson Sotheby's International Realty over Alyssa Burrage, who said that tobacco fumes from the condominium below the one she bought for $405,000 aggravated her asthma, according to Jay S. Gregory, the Boston lawyer for the broker and real estate firm.

During the weeklong trial, Burrage, a 32-year-old advertising company employee, and her parents testified that they noticed the smell of smoke when they repeatedly visited the condo in Boston's South End in 2006. The broker, Joseph DeAngelo, told them that the seller must be a smoker and the stench would disappear, said Burrage.

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VIDEO: Woman loses smoking case against realtor 

A landmark case about secondhand smoke between a woman and her realtor was thrown out of court.

A Suffolk County jury rejected Alyssa Burrage's claims that her realtor misled her into buying a $400,000 condominium in the South End.

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• Jury rejects condo owner's claim that broker misled her about smoker  

A Suffolk County jury today rejected a Boston woman's claim that her real estate broker misled her by concealing that a resident in the condominium below the one she bought for $405,000 smoked cigarettes.

After deliberating for less than an hour, the 14-member jury sided with the broker, Joseph DeAngelo, and his employer, Gibson Sotheby's International Realty, over the plaintiff, Alyssa Burrage, according to Jay S. Gregory, the lawyer for the broker and real estate firm. Burrage, a 32-year-old advertising company employee, suffers from asthma. . . .

``There was a huge discrepancy between her version of events and his,'' Gregory said. He attributed the testimony of Burrage and her parents to ``self-serving hindsight'' and ``faulty memory.''

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EDITORIAL: Smoke-free plan is solid  

Boston Mayor Tom Menino's plan to ban smoking in city housing may draw some controversy. But the mayor has used some hard numbers to back up his call for a gradual transition to entirely smoke-free public housing by 2014.

Yes, there are critics who argue that the city has no business serving as the smoking police, and that the restrictions being proposed discriminate against poor people who can't afford to move.

But Menino has the numbers - not to mention a growing national trend - on his side. . . .

As to the charge of violating the rights of people who have little choice over where they live, what about the rights of their nonsmoking neighbors in the same predicament?

The world didn't end when smoking was banned in the workplace. Nor will it end if smokers who live in public housing are asked to step outside to light up.

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• Public housing faces smoking ban  

But Eugene Capoccia, executive director for the Leominster and Lunenburg housing authorities, wants to eliminate smoking in public housing starting with the Pearl Brook apartments.

He hopes to implement the policy in Lunenburg in the next few months.

Once the policy is worked out for Lunenburg, Capoccia said he would like to implement one in Leominster's public housing units as well.

"I've been pushing for it for quite some time because almost two years ago we had a fire in Lunenburg (in) which ... eight units were destroyed, there were a number of people displaced permanently, and one man lost his life," Capoccia said. "We feel pretty strongly about ending smoking in our senior housing."

The state Department of Housing and Community Development sent Capoccia an e-mail recently giving him permission to submit a proposal outlining details of the no-smoking proposal and how it would be enforced, he said.

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Grandma breathes easier in smoke-free building  

The high rate of asthma typically found in kids in housing projects is among the factors spurring Boston to ban smoking in public housing.

"You have young children who are living in households with smokers and have asthma or are at risk of developing asthma," said Doug Brugge, a professor at Tufts School of Medicine and author of a 2003 study of Dorchester and South Boston projects that found elevated childhood asthma rates. "Clearly that is not a good thing for those children."

Mold, poor ventiliation and pests also exacerbate asthma, but second-hand smoke is a main contributer, he said.

Meena Carr, 68, who lives in Roslindale's Washington-Beech development, said smoke from other apartments triggered asthma attacks in her grandson, Malik Carr, 9, until she convinced the building to go smoke-free.

"They don't have a choice," she said of children like Malik.

There has been no widescale study of asthma rates of children in Boston public housing, but public-health experts say rates are higher than in the general population.

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Puffers fuming over planned ban  

The Boston Housing Authority plans to open more than 100 smoke-free public housing units in a rebuilt section of Old Colony slated for completion in 2012, in keeping with a vow by Mayor Thomas M. Menino to have entirely smoke-free public housing by 2014.

But Southie smokers have a message for the mayor: You can pry those cigarettes out of our cold, dead hands.

"I try to quit somewhat for my health," Matthew Tilton, 21, told the Herald, leaning out of his building's window after stubbing out a Newport. "But if they force it to, 'If you're gonna smoke, you can't live here,' then that's not right."

Yet, not all smokers were feeling the hate. Some ruefully embrace the ban.

"I'd go for a new unit," said Veronica Szwanke, 27, of Old Colony where, she said, people chain-smoke in the hallways. "I'd quit if I had to," the Newport smoker said.

Five-year resident and 13-year smoker Benito Diaz, 56, said he'd welcome the ban, too - for safety and olfactory reasons.

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