Los Angeles Times

Friday, November 24, 2000

Home no longer a safe haven for smokers
West Hollywood to allow landlords to declare apartments as nonsmoking and evict violators. City also outlaws self-service tobacco displays.

By JEFF ADLER

Smokers take heed: You may be a dying breed in West Hollywood.

The City Council recently enacted a measure to protect apartment tenants from secondhand smoke. It is believed to be the first such action of its kind in the nation to resolve conflicts between nonsmokers and their smoking neighbors.

Led by Councilman Paul Koretz, who will be ascending to the state Assembly next month, the council also has approved a program to make it more difficult to buy tobacco products.

The city plans to publicize that landlords now can declare smoke-free units in their properties under existing laws.

In addition, landlords will be able to list units and buildings as smoking or nonsmoking with a city registry.

When a nonsmoking tenant files a complaint concerning smoke drifting in from a neighbor's apartment, the city will arbitrate the conflict. People who refuse to mediate or who violate arbitration agreements could potentially face fines and eviction.

Although existing laws allow landlords to convert unoccupied apartments into nonsmoking units, most building owners have been acting under a different impression, said Esther Schiller, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles-based Smokefree Air for Everyone.

"Most landowners assume that smokers are protected under civil rights laws, but they're not," she said. "They're a consumer group."

Schiller said a recent study by her group in West Hollywood found that some 67% of those surveyed would prefer to live in a smoke-free building.

Cynthia Harding, director of the county's tobacco control program, said secondhand smoke is believed to kill more than 52,000 nonsmokers in the nation each year.

"It is a serious health hazard to people who have health problems and can't take being next to that smoke," Koretz said.

"But at the same time, many of these people are on relatively low, fixed incomes and can't afford to move so they're stuck in a Catch-22."

Most West Hollywood residents are renters, with about 65% living in apartments and 24% in condominiums, according to a 1998 survey.

Koretz, a nonsmoker, said he initiated the action as a result of a "trickle of complaints" during his 16 years of city service.

"What we're doing is dealing with the drifting of smoke in apartment buildings, which doesn't happen with great frequency, but it does happen on a consistent basis," he said.

"We're protecting those most vulnerable . . . people with respiratory problems, asthma, compromised immune systems like HIV, seniors and children from having to breathe deadly secondhand smoke."

The council also has approved an ordinance that outlaws self-service tobacco displays, typically found in supermarkets and on the countertops of convenient stores.

More than 70 other cities throughout the state, including Los Angeles, have passed similar ordinances.

"Self-service displays make it really easy for children to steal cigarettes and become addicted to a product before they can legally purchase it," Harding said.

"More than 135,000 children today will die prematurely because of a decision they made as an adolescent--the decision to smoke cigarettes."

Brendan McCormick, a spokesman for Philip Morris USA, has said his company supports discontinuing the use of self-service displays to prevent shoplifting.

City businesses have six months to comply with the new law, which makes tobacco products inaccessible to customers without the assistance of a store employee.

Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times