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Jump to full article: Boston (MA) Globe, 2009-10-29
Author: Taryn Plumb Globe Correspondent / October 29, 2009
Intro: It was a recent trip to the park that finally did it.
Jason Mayo watched as a father pushed his child on a swing, cigarette clenched between his teeth. On every upswing, the child got a face full of exhaled smoke.
"We can't tell people how to parent,'' said Mayo, a member of the Ayer parks and recreation committee, which has banned smoking in the town's recreation areas. "But all the other kids around him were inhaling that cigarette too.''
As antismoking sentiment sweeps across the country, nonsmokers are taking back bars, restaurants, and workplaces, snuffing smoking out of its indoor havens. And now some of them are turning their sights on the great outdoors.
Holliston and Upton have enacted similar outdoor smoking bans. And in another example of the widespread public crackdown on smoking, Needham has outlawed the sale of cigarettes in pharmacies and Newton and Framingham are trying to do the same.
Ayer's parks and recreation committee implemented its outdoor ban in August, and the panel may also pursue a bylaw at the spring Town Meeting. In a more sweeping stroke, the town's Board of Health is pursuing a regulation that would apply the prohibition to all town-owned property and land and impose a $100 fine on offenders. The board has set a public hearing on the subject for January.
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