Smoking Inside Apartments is Banned, Unless it’s Weed

Smoking tobacco cigarettes is on the way out. Smoking weed is on the way in. That's even more true in the city of San Francisco. Smoking is already banned in common areas to protect people from secondhand smoke. A new ordinance in the city will ban smoking inside apartments and condominiums as well. Supervisor Norman Lee wrote the legislation and said:

Secondhand smoke causes harm & everyone should have clean air to breathe where they live.

On Tuesday, in a vote of 10 to 1, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, banned smoking tobacco but not marijuana in apartments and condominiums.

I helped out on a morning back in Portland about 6 or 7 years ago and this topic came up on the air. I get the ban. When you smoke cigarettes, the secondhand smoke leads to very serious problems for those who aren't choosing to smoke. They just happen to be around the smoke. The host of the show did not get this. He was a smoker and felt that it was his right to smoke, no matter how it affected other people. According to him, it was other people infringing on his right to enjoy a cigarette. And yes he firmly believed this.

I think this is where the whole "my rights" argument gets missed by a lot of people. Who's rights are more important? The person who wants to smoke the cigarette or the person who doesn't want to breathe the secondhand smoke? I can answer this. It's the latter. The first just doesn't get to smoke cigarettes. But the second person, if you allow the first person to smoke wherever they want, has the possibility of dying because of the secondhand smoke. This one is actually pretty simple.