“You can’t smoke anywhere, now you can’t smoke at home?”
Jump to full article: Columbia Daily Spectator (Columbia U.), 2009-11-19
Author: Nicholas Bloom
Intro: Finding a place to light up a cigarette can be difficult these days, but for public housing residents, smoking may soon be close to impossible.
Following the wave of recent anti-smoking laws, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently sent a memo strongly encouraging public housing authorities nationwide to “implement non-smoking policies in some or all of their public housing units.” Although the New York City Housing Authority has yet to institute any laws locally, the memo has sparked a heated debate about the merits of such policies.
For some, this legislation is a direct infringement on privacy and other basic freedoms. But others see this as an opportunity to encourage healthy environments and mitigate persistent problems of asthma.
“You can’t smoke anywhere, now you can’t smoke at home?” said Audrey Silk, founder of the smokers’ rights group New York City Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment. . . .
“Your home should be your castle, no matter whether you own it or not,” she said. “The city here is creating a divide in classes. People in housing are there because they can’t afford anything else. Now these people would be punished for their personal situation by having their right to smoke taken away. This is an intolerance campaign.”
Joanne Koldare, director of the New York City Coalition for a Smoke Free City, also said she sees smoking in public housing projects as an issue of individual rights. But for her, this is the right to be free from the harms of secondhand smoke.
“Those people living in low income housing should be able to live in a complex that doesn’t have smoking,”
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