Smoking
to be banned on patios
Vancouver
Sun
Smokers who
thought there might be some loophole or wriggle room that would
allow smoking on proliferating sidewalk patios can forget it.
And non-smokers
who have to wade through a cloud of cigarette smoke on restaurant
patios can rejoice.
Smoking is
due to be banned on all sidewalk patios in Vancouver, says Domenic
Losito, the health protection officer for Vancouver Coastal Health.
Losito said
the provincial government's recent announcement that it will ban
smoking within a certain distance of entryways will likely cover
80 per cent of the city's existing patios.
However,
just in case, he plans to bring a new bylaw to city council in the
near future that drives the last nail in the coffin of cigarette
smoking on patios.
Both the
province's new regulations and the city's new bylaw will likely
come into effect around January 2008.
Losito said
he had been preparing a draft bylaw to ban smoking on patios earlier
in the year, but then the province announced its own smoking prohibitions,
which included a prohibition on smoking around the entryways of
buildings.
He is waiting
to see exactly what the province decides is the range of the "bubble
zone" around entryways before he finalizes his report. Other
jurisdictions, like Washington State, ban smoking within about eight
metes (25 feet) of entryways, while in Quebec it's nine metes and
in Nova Scotia, it's four metes.
Many restaurant
patios have turned into de facto smoking areas, since smoking was
banned in restaurants.
A city report
going to council next week has proposed a new policy to encourage
more patios, by allowing them outside bars, except for those in
the three blocks at the corner of the Granville street entertainment
district.
One of the few negative
comments about expanding patios from the public was concern
about smoking on patios. The report noted that Losito's ban would
be put forward soon, in case there were concerns that bars would
install patio seating in order to simply create smoking areas
"The
smoking issue will not factor into the decision by the owner of
a liquor establishment on whether to seek approval of an outdoor
patio,"it said.
Losito also
noted that many of the city's existing patios already violate current
no-smoking policy anyway, since so many of them have enclosed their
spaces with plastic walls or awnings that they have restricted air
flow and effectively created indoor rooms that are governed under
the current bylaw.
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