Hermosa Beach might ban smoking while dining outdoors
About 20 members of the “Walkers and Talkers” dine outside at Café Bonaparte after a Tuesday morning pier-to-pier walk. The 16-year-old group boasts about 50 members who throw parties and take trips together when they’re not walking and talking. Photo
The Hermosa Beach City Council has moved to study a possible ban on smoking in the open-air patios and rooftops of Hermosa restaurants. The decision came after an especially heated discussion on the council dais.
Hermosa Council members will meet with restaurateurs and the Beach Cities Health District, with an eye toward developing an ordinance to ban the open-air smoking. Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Culver City and Calabasas are among cities that have such a ban in place.
A Los Angeles County Department of Public Health survey found Hermosa has the 12th highest smoking rate among 127 of its communities, with 17.4 percent of Hermosans smoking.
The city has banned smoking on the beach since 2006.
Council members favoring a possible ban at outdoor eateries cited second-hand smoke as their concern. Federal health officials estimate that as many as 73,000 nonsmokers die each year from the smoke of others, while 300,000 children get pneumonia, bronchitis and other respiratory infections from secondhand smoke.
Susan Burden, CEO of the Beach Cities Health District, told the council that secondhand smoke threatens restaurant employees as well as nonsmoking patrons.
“Secondhand smoke is damaging, especially to children,” she said.
Hermosa environmental activist Dency Nelson told the council that restaurateurs once said “the sky was falling” when the state government banned indoor smoking in their businesses, but that fear was unfounded.
Three Mira Costa High School seniors and a guidance counselor also asked the council to ban the open-air smoking. [Check out portable vapes, the alternative to quit smoking.]
Former Councilman George Barks said the council shouldn’t “over-regulate” the eateries.
“I think the timing is just not right,” he said. “We’re in a recession here.”
Smoke and fire
Councilman Jeff Duclos, who led the charge toward a ban, said it is “irrefutable” that secondhand smoke is “a Class A carcinogen.” He pointed to research showing that exposure to secondhand smoke in the open air on a cruise ship was about equal to exposure in the ship’s enclosed casino.
“If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything,” Councilman Howard Fishman said.
Councilman Kit Bobko complained that a model smoking-ban ordinance, presented to the council by the nonprofit organization Public Health Law and Policy, would make violations a misdemeanor, potentially punishable by fines and a year in jail. He said a violation could occur when a smoker subjects a nonsmoker to four micrograms of smoke per cubic meter of air.
“To make it a crime to smoke is taking it entirely too far,” he said. “…It’s so Orwellian I believe Orwell would be offended by it.”
Bobko and councilman Michael DiVirgilio pointed out that the council had rejected any discussion of a ban in October. Then, at a meeting in November with Bobko and DiVirgilio absent, Duclos, Fishman and Mayor Peter Tucker voted to resurrect the matter for the discussion that occurred at Tuesday’s meeting.
Bobko and DiVirgilio ripped their colleagues for resurrecting the matter in their absence.
“I’m never going to take advantage of your absence,” DiVirgilio said, turning to his colleagues. He pledged “a commitment to a higher personal standard” and said he was “incredibly agitated.”
Bobko said he was “profoundly disappointed that business is done this way in our city.”
Duclos, the chief recipient of the heat, fired back, calling the position by Bobko and DiVirgilio “egotistical” and “bizarre.”
“I would also remind them that this body does not cease to function based on their presence or absence,” Duclos said.
Duclos said he reintroduced the smoking matter after receiving a letter from the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence of the South Bay.
Tucker told Bobko and DiVirgilio that had they been present for the Nov. 23 meeting, their votes would not have outnumbered those of the council majority.
From the table
In interviews before the council acted, a handful of prominent restaurateurs offered differing views on a possible open-air smoking ban.
Fred Hahn, owner of Patrick Molloy’s on the Pier Plaza, said a ban would impede his business, especially when summer comes, bringing with it more foreign tourists, many of whom smoke.
“What genius thought of this one?” he asked.
“I’m not a smoker, but in this day and age, right now, with this economic environment, if they start going after patios down here, it will have an effect,” he said.
Hahn said non-smoking patrons don’t complain about smoke on the patio, except in the rare case of a “really smelly” cigar.
Ron Newman, co-owner of Sharkeez on the Plaza, also cited the downturned economy and the threat of foreign tourists passing up Hermosa eateries. He said some cities have banned smoking in restaurant patios only until 9 or 10 p.m., when a “late night crowd” is less likely to object.
“It’s not the right time to get into this stuff,” he said. “There are a lot of empty buildings, and a lot of businesses are still struggling.”
Owner Cris Bennet of Good Stuff said cigarette smoke already is considered bad stuff at his restaurant on the Hermosa Strand as well as those in Redondo Beach, El Segundo and West Los Angeles.
“All the Good Stuff restaurants are smoke-free on the patios,” he said.
Smoking conflicts with the restaurant’s health-conscious theme and the smoke would irritate the largely health-conscious customers, Bennet said. Smoking patrons go to the sidewalk for a quick puff, and few seem inconvenienced by the restaurant’s smoking ban, he said.
“It usually irritates the New Yorkers mostly,” Bennet said.
Paul Hennessey of Hennessey’s Tavern said smoking is not allowed during food service on his patio or the second-story rooftop overlooking The Strand and the Pier Plaza. He said if smoking was allowed, the smoke would bother diners.
He sounded sanguine on the possibility of a citywide ban, which would presumably apply to all restaurants equally.
If the whole town is in the same boat, it doesn’t really matter,” he said. ER