GENEVA, Ill. (CBS) ― Smoking is already prohibited in virtually all indoor public environments in Illinois, including restaurants and bars. Now Kane County officials are taking it a step further and weighing an outdoor smoking ban.
Aurora Township resident Stacy Blaszak proposed the ban to the Kane County Board Development Committee on Tuesday, according to the Daily Herald. She claimed that smoke seeps its way even through closed windows, and people have “a right and a need to breathe,” the newspaper reported.
Blaszak said the Cook County suburbs of Worth and Glenview already have laws limiting outdoor smoking, although Kane County officials did not know about the laws, the Daily Herald reported.
Committee chairwoman Cathy Hurlbut (R-Elgin) said the staff would review the proposal, although board member Mike Kenyon (R-South Elgin) said a world where smoking is forbidden outdoors would be “a utopia I don’t want to be in,” the Aurora Beacon-News reported.
Hurlbut also expressed doubt about an ordinance that could forbid people from smoking even in their own backyards or front porches, according to the Daily Herald.
Outdoor smoking bans have been instituted elsewhere in the country. In January 2009, the San Francisco Bay area city of Belmont, Calif., banned smoking in all city parks, businesses, and multi-story apartments and condos.
In January 2009, Belmont adopted an ordinance that bans smoking in city parks, all businesses and all multi-story apartments and condominiums.
Hurlbut indicated she is skeptical about the legality of creating a local law banning all smoking in outdoor spaces that would include someone’s backyard or front porch.
In the Los Angeles county community of Calabasas, Calif., smoking is prohibited in all indoor and outdoor public places, including sidewalks, bus stops, parks, soccer fields, condo pool decks and outdoor cafes. In the San Francisco Bay Area community of Belmont, Calif., the ban extends to all multi-story apartments and condominiums.
In the Chicago area, the Old Orchard Mall in Skokie banned smoking in its outdoor areas in 2008, but reversed the ban this year after it proved too hard to enforce.
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