Feds move to make public housing a tobacco smoke-free zone

The Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed a rule Thursday to require the more than 3,100 public housing agencies across the country to make their properties smoke-free. It would ban cigarettes, cigars, and pipes in all living units, common areas and outdoor areas within 25 feet of a public housing building.

“HUD proposes implementation of smoke-free public housing to improve indoor air quality in the housing, benefit the health of public housing residents and staff, reduce the risk of catastrophic fires, and lower overall maintenance costs”, reads the proposed rule.

The HUD has conducted a long campaign to make public housing – known as council housing in the United Kingdom – smoke-free. Now the Dept.is insisting on a nation-wide ban in all public housing (New York City is cited as the biggest slacker). Would the ban be enforced in the nation’s finest public house, the White House?

“How fair is that if I live in public housing and I can’t smoke in my home, but across the street somebody who lives in a regular tenement can, and we both pay rent”, George said. It won’t be easy- more than 400,000 people live in large public housing developments across the five boroughs. “Smoking is legal”, said Porcha Darby, a public housing resident. She lives at the Robert Fulton Houses in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, which takes up three city blocks.

“They must understand and realize that we are smokers and have been for quite a few time, and just quitting smoking is not acceptable”, Price said. “What HUD should be focusing on is getting people in those housing projects enrolled in Medicaid and that would give them access to smoking cessation services which would actually directly address the public health issue of concern here”. For that matter, alcohol isn’t really good for you beyond a very reasonable amount of red wine. or so I’m told. “I think it’s a great idea”, McKay said. Venning’s own granddaughter, Nayanta Venning, 24, is one of them.

“This is making great strides to protect all people from secondhand smoke and “thirdhand” smoke”, said Karen Blumenfeld, executive director at Global Advisors on Smokefree Policy. “But I would have to comply with it”, said chain-smoker Dana Jones, shaking her head as she escorted her 11-year-old son past a clutch of smokers outside Bethel Towers, an apartment complex next to a church in downtown Atlanta.

“We do have a lot of residents who complain about having to be exposed to secondhand smoke”. Electronic cigarettes that emit vapor but not smoke would not be subject to the ban. A woman named Margaret who answered the door said she smoked in the apartment only when her relative who uses an oxygen tank was not home.

Tenant Alba Rivera also supported the ban. “So you’d have to go outside and the weather will get awful”.

While not commenting directly on the proposed rule, Philip Morris United States of America says in a policy statement that it agrees that people should be able to avoid secondhand smoke in many public places and on the job.