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Smoking ban debated 

On Oct. 6 the Aldermanic Human Services Committee approved the hospital’s request to ban smoking on the publicly owned sections of Chapel, Orchard and George streets and Sherman Avenue, and sent the request to the full Board of Aldermen, which will vote on it Nov. 5. At the same meeting, Ward 20 Alderman Charles Blango, who chairs the committee, decided to delay action on a similar request by Masjid al-Islam, a neighboring mosque on George Street, until the Board of Aldermen’s Nov. 5 meeting.

“I didn’t want to open up a Pandora’s Box,” Blango said of his decision, citing his reluctance to set a precedent for allowing non-medical, private institutions such as the mosque to restrict smoking on public property. When Ward 23 Alderman Yusuf Shah, who is a member of Masjid al-Islam, submitted in late September the original proposal to ban smoking around the hospital, the proposal banned smoking on the sidewalks around both the hospital and the mosque. In late September, the Board of Aldermen unanimously voted down the proposal because it wanted to hold a public hearing on the issue. The board sent the request to the Human Services Committee for review because it had done so for a similar proposal by Yale-New Haven Hospital earlier this year.

At the committee’s Oct. 6 meeting, a number of aldermen asked Shah why he had included the mosque in the proposal, and Shah said he feared the ban would deter smokers displaced from St. Raphael’s from smoking in front of the mosque.

But Blango introduced an amendment to separate the two areas because people on the committee said they had concerns about legal problems that could arise if the ban were approved, Blango said. Blango also asked to see a legal opinion from an outside expert on any potential legal problems that could arise from the mosque’s request.

The debate about the appropriateness of the city’s efforts to regulate smoking on public property is playing out on streets surrounding St. Raphael’s, where half a dozen employees and patients interviewed expressed mixed feelings about the pending ban.

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