The city’s current ordinance bans smoking inside public buildings but does not address smoking outdoors, Assistant City Attorney Kathryn Walker said.
Council to look at wider smoking ban
June 9, 2007
By Jane Glenn Cannon, Staff Writer
By Jane Glenn Cannon, Staff Writer
NORMAN — An updated version of the city’s ordinance governing tobacco sales and use, including a ban on smoking in public parks, will be ready for city council consideration June 26, officials said.
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The city’s current ordinance bans smoking inside public buildings but does not address smoking outdoors, Assistant City Attorney Kathryn Walker said.
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The city’s current ordinance bans smoking inside public buildings but does not address smoking outdoors, Assistant City Attorney Kathryn Walker said.
However, a section can be added including a ban on tobacco use in parks, she said.
Walker recently updated Norman’s current ordinance because the wording in some parts does not match state law. She presented a draft of it, including the changes she made, to the council in a study session earlier this week.
“We felt it best to bring our municipal ordinance in line with state law, because if the two laws match it makes enforcement easier. Most of the changes are simply minor wording changes,” Walker said.
Council members have asked Walker to add a section to the updated version of the ordinance, adding a ban on smoking in public parks. The council will vote on the ordinance as a whole in its June 26 council meeting.
Noble recently passed a ban on smoking in city parks, Walker said, “but as far as I can tell no other city in Oklahoma has passed one.”
Councilman Doug Cubberley proposed the ban at a recent city council meeting. In the study session, Cubberley also proposed banning smoking in city-owned parking lots and city-owned open spaces.
Part of the reason, he said, “is that we need to send the right message to children. We need to send the message to them that we are concerned about their health and that smoking is not appropriate.”
While most of the council members supported a ban on smoking in public parks, none of them agreed with Cubberley on banning smoking in parking lots.
Mayor-elect Cindy Rosenthal said such a ban would be confusing and hard to enforce. People can smoke in their vehicles, she said, “but I can see police officers writing tickets when someone is sitting in a car smoking but may be blowing smoke out the window.”
Councilman David Hopper said he wasn’t sure he supported the ban on smoking in parks “because parks are open air. I don’t see the danger. The smoke dissipates.”
Cubberley suffers from asthma and said he cannot tolerate any secondhand smoke or it brings on an asthmatic attack.
“It doesn’t dissipate enough. I have stayed away from public events in the park because I know people will be smoking, and I believe there are others like me who have had to do the same,” he said.
