City Council considered a no-smoking ordinance in June 2013, but the item did not receive a motion for a vote. Oceanside is the only North County coastal city that still allows smoking in outdoor dining areas.
It is anticipated a no-smoking ban will be looked at again this December after recently elected Councilman Chuck Lowery is sworn in to office.
Councilman Jerry Kern, who spoke against a smoking ban in 2013, said campaigning is underway to bring the item back to City Council.
Last week Vista Community Clinic representatives made presentations on the dangers of secondhand smoke at the MainStreet Oceanside and Oceanside Chamber of Commerce meetings.
Gena Knutson, Vista Community Clinic tobacco control program manager, said a fact sheet on effects of secondhand smoke was shared. Survey data was also presented that showed San Diego County restaurants that banned smoking did not suffer business loss, and in some cases increased business.
At the MainStreet Oceanside meeting a spirited and lengthy discussion followed the presentation.
Kern objected to a no-smoking ordinance. He said the decision should be left up to restaurant owners.
In a later interview, Kern said the fact that two-thirds of Oceanside restaurants voluntarily prohibit smoking shows an ordinance is not needed.
“We don’t need more regulations,” Kern said.
He added the handful of restaurants that choose to allow outdoor smoking should be allowed to continue.
Knutson said regulations are needed to protect restaurant employees who must endure hours of secondhand smoke to serve customers.
“People have individual rights, but your action could be harmful to me, or hurting me, if you’re affecting my right to breath clean air,” Knutson said.
Knutson said reconsidering a ban has not been put on the City Council agenda yet. She added the clinic plans to provide information to City Council members.
“We’ll see where we go from there,” Knutson said. “I hope Oceanside city leaders embrace this. We’ve had a very positive response from other cities.”
Oceanside’s 2013 ordinance proposed to ban smoking on restaurant patios adjacent to public streets and sidewalks, but allowed smoking on dining patios on the second floor and private property.
7 comments
This patio smoking ban is not necessary. Second hand smoke does not pose a health risk indoor and absolutely is no threat outdoors. This is part of an orchestrated campaign toward prohibition. Keep the patios smoker friendly. No more smoking bans!
Health concerns from second hand don’t bother me. What bothers me is the trashy people that stink the place up then throw their butts in the gutter.
oh please you too…I have many family members who have asthma most likely due to 2nd hand smoke..they never smoked. And the amount of heart disease, limp wangs, poor circulation, lung disease and yes, lung cancer, affects hundreds of thousands of smokers. So go ahead and smoke..not near me or my loved ones or any other person or animal that does NOT give you their permission to pollute their air.
Thanks Harley Rider for some facts and truth. The other aspect of this is the government regulations on our lives, and private businesses. Enough is enough. Regs do no good for our economy, and destroy freedom at every turn. So tired of California’s tyranny and Fascism.
Smokers’ lungs used in half of transplants
Almost half of lung transplant patients were given the lungs taken from heavy smokers, with one in five coming from donors who had smoked at least one packet of cigarettes a day for 20 or more years
Despite this, new research shows that those people given the lungs of smokers were just as likely to be alive up to three years after transplantation as those who had organs from non-smokers. In some cases, they had improved survival rates.
“Donor lungs from even heavy smokers may provide a valuable avenue for increasing donor organ availability,” says André Simon, director of heart and lung transplantation and consultant cardiac surgeon at Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust.
“Our findings provide for the first time real world figures for the perceived risk of implantation of lungs from donors with even a heavy smoking history, and they show that such donor lungs may provide a much-needed lease on life to the critically ill patient whose chances of survival diminish with every day or week that passes by on the waiting list.
“I believe that candidates significantly decrease their chances of survival if they choose to decline organs from smokers.”
Lung transplantation is a life-saving therapy for patients with end-stage lung disease, but a shortage of organ donors means people are dying while waiting. UK Transplant Registry data show that only 20 per cent get transplants within six months. The figure rises to 51 per cent after three years, but by that time nearly one in three patients has died waiting for a transplant.
Transplant patients who are given smokers’ lungs (right) are just as likely to survive as those who receive organs from non-smokers (left), a study has revealed. Some patients even had higher survival rates”http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2550424/Smokers-lungs-just-likely-transplant-patients-alive-non-smokers-organs.html#ixzz3DmLHYLj9
This pretty well destroys the Myth of second hand smoke:
http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/28/16741714-lungs-from-pack-a-day-smokers-safe-for-transplant-study-finds?lite
Lungs from pack-a-day smokers safe for transplant, study finds.
By JoNel Aleccia, Staff Writer, NBC News.
Using lung transplants from heavy smokers may sound like a cruel joke, but a new study finds that organs taken from people who puffed a pack a day for more than 20 years are likely safe.
What’s more, the analysis of lung transplant data from the U.S. between 2005 and 2011 confirms what transplant experts say they already know: For some patients on a crowded organ waiting list, lungs from smokers are better than none.
“I think people are grateful just to have a shot at getting lungs,” said Dr. Sharven Taghavi, a cardiovascular surgical resident at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, who led the new study………………………
Ive done the math here and this is how it works out with second ahnd smoke and people inhaling it!
The 16 cities study conducted by the U.S. DEPT OF ENERGY and later by Oakridge National laboratories discovered:
Cigarette smoke, bartenders annual exposure to smoke rises, at most, to the equivalent of 6 cigarettes/year.
146,000 CIGARETTES SMOKED IN 20 YEARS AT 1 PACK A DAY.
A bartender would have to work in second hand smoke for 2433 years to get an equivalent dose.
Then the average non-smoker in a ventilated restaurant for an hour would have to go back and forth each day for 119,000 years to get an equivalent 20 years of smoking a pack a day! Pretty well impossible ehh!
People have individual rights, but your action could be harmful to me, or hurting me, if you’re affecting my right to breath clean air,” Knutson said.
ROFLMAO
Congratulations cookout fans you’ve just survived being around second hand smoke for 120,000 years of equivalent exposure! YOU SURVIVED CONGRADULATIONS!
Barbecues poison the air with toxins and could cause cancer, research suggests. A study by the French environmental campaigning group Robin des Bois found that a typical two-hour barbecue can release the same level of dioxins as up to 220,000 cigarettes.
Dioxins are a group of chemicals known to increase the likelihood of cancer. The figures were based on grilling four large steaks, four turkey cuts and eight large sausages.”
Even the CANCER SOCIETY has benefit cookouts yet they push for smoking bans! Talk about being Hipocrits! Heres a real sweety pie of a special hype The Dumbest Fundraising Event Ever? American Cancer Society Joins BBQ Meat “Cook Off” to Raise Money for Cancer Research NaturalNews)
Texans living in Navarro County are about to win a collective award for being the dumbest people in the world when it comes to diet and nutrition: They are hosting a BBQ meat cook-off to raise money for — get this — cancer research!
Even the Governor of Kentucky and all the Anti-smoking Activists were at Fancy Farm for the big Political Cook Off Cook Out yet they too survived Inhaling 10S OF BILLIONS worth of equal cigarette smoke.
Even there own Human exhaled Breath creates hundreds of the same chemicals found in tobacco smoke yet we arent outlawing HUMANS FROM INDOOR SPACES………
Human Exhaled Air Analytics…” Buszewski et al, Biomed. Chromatogr. 21: 553–566 (2007) http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com…
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