This past week, Q-line asked: “Given the latest proposal to ban smoking on the Third Street Promenade, should Santa Monica follow the city of Calabasas’ lead and ban smoking from all public places — sidewalks, streets, rooftop decks?”
Here are your responses: ✆ “In regards to smoking on the Promenade, I go down here often and I don’t see a lot of people smoking. I see a lot of homeless people who sit all day on the benches and smoke and push their butts into the sidewalk. How many laws are they going to pass that they can’t enforce? Look at how many laws they have now. You still have blowers going off all day and skaters on the sidewalks.” ✆ “I think it would be a good idea to ban smoking in all public places. It’s so annoying and unhealthy for all, and I’m sick of all the butts all over.” ✆ “We have enough problems right now. We don’t need a public smoking ban, which is not enforced anyway. We need more hands-off policies, especially when we treat the homeless like a privileged class.” ✆ “Getting a $750 fine for smoking on the Promenade is absolutely ridiculous. If people want to smoke outside, they shouldn’t be fined. They should focus on other stuff. Concentrate on the gangs.” ✆ “I think you should provide a place where people can learn to quit smoking, free to the public, right next to where it’s banned. If you’re going to demand they not smoke, you should help them.” ✆ “I believe it would be a good idea to ban smoking, and automobiles and fireplaces and barbecues.” ✆ “There are more pollutants in your home, especially in your carpet, than there is in second-hand smoke. The City Council, with their highly-paid tax exempt environmental non-profits, are constructing a non-issue to distract us from all of the failures that it’s responsible for: parking, traffic, obscene building growth, bums (sorry, I mean ‘socially-challenged’ people). Our socialist leaders who know what’s best for us are chipping away our freedoms. Next comes gun control, water control, housing control. The council is like a magician, distracting us with the one hand while hiding the coin in the other, confusing us with silly issues.” ✆ “Do like we do with the worsening graffiti, traffic and homeless encampments on our property, ignore it. Like Bush, change the subject. Taking away individual rights to a legal product is not going to stop war and crime or dire health crises. It won’t even impeach Bush. A ban might provide a second’s worth of annoyance to a passing anti-smoker. A ban will not keep down the over-priced library, or keep branches open. Lighten up planners and let smokers light up.” ✆ “Fine anyone who throws butts on the ground. We need that for adults and children and dogs alike.” ✆ “Santa Monica definitely should follow the lead of Calabasas and ban smoking from all public places, such as roof decks, streets and the sidewalks. Ii think it’s a good idea that property owners in the rental business give serious thought to making their properties smoke-free environments. My wife and I have done that for a number of years, and there’s a movement underway now to make this something that is much broader than a mom-and-pop operation. This is crucial.” ✆ “Absolutely not. Butt out. If you want to do something useful, deal with car emission pollution, not cigarette butts, especially on the outside. More importantly, deal with the homeless problem. That’s a much bigger issue here.” ✆ “First of all, getting those dangerous, troublesome smokers removed from our midst may not be a bad idea, but maybe we ought to deal with the immediate problem of bums and aggressive transients amongst us. Bust the odd Dutch or British tourist later, when our streets become safe again. We need City Hall to solve real problems.” ✆ “Something should be done about it. It stinks, they cause disease and filth, so let’s get rid of them. I mean the homeless, not the smokers. They’re bad, too. I don’t want to get cancer from an idiot smoker. If they want to kill themselves let them go home and do it.” ✆ “Stupid, stupid, stupid. Just because someone jumps off a bridge doesn’t mean we have to do it, and I think the most important thing is reasonableness. So, don’t follow the way of Calabasas.” ✆ “I don’t know what’s in Calabasas, but I think we could make it a little easier on our police department by not passing so many laws. It might be easier to get to the bottom line by taking out the benches, bike racks and trees, then you might really get to what you’re trying to do, if you get my drift.” ✆ “Yes, I’m a smoker, but a non-drinker and a non-driver, so I say let’s ban the smoking in the city, but let’s also ban the cars, alcohol sales, the illegal immigrants don’t get on the Promenade without a passport, and you can tear down any building you don’t like.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 20, 2006. Read the original PDF.