Tobacco.org

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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