LAGUNA HILLS : Council to Vote on Anti-Smoking Law

Anyone craving a cigarette within the city limits may have to step outside, go to a bar or register in a hotel room to light up in the future.

Those will be about the only public places where smokers may puff freely if the City Council adopts a strict anti-smoking ordinance on Tuesday.

And restaurant owners and the Laguna Hills Chamber of Commerce don’t like it.

The ordinance would prohibit smoking in virtually “all enclosed areas available to and customarily used by the general public.” That includes stores, banks, elevators, restaurants, restrooms, waiting rooms, meeting rooms, galleries, libraries, museums, theaters, hotel lobbies, Laundromats, malls, beauty shops, barber shops, polling places and parking garages, to name a few.

Even some outdoor areas would be off-limits to tobacco users. These include any space within 20 feet of the entrance to a public place, and areas where people congregate for business or services, such as concession stands, ATM machines and bus stops.

In addition, the ordinance would ban smoking in all enclosed workplaces and would phase out in six months all tobacco vending machines, except for those in bars.

The ordinance was drafted based on recommendations of an 11-member council-appointed committee that included restaurant, hotel, retail, commercial real estate and health care representatives.

One area left open for discussion in a draft of the ordinance is whether the smoking ban will go into effect immediately in restaurants or whether eating establishments will have a year to phase in compliance.

But whichever way the ordinance is crafted, some restaurant owners object that it will hurt business.

“I think it sucks,” said Jack Finnerty, owner of the Pizza Store and More, whose restaurant complies with the current ordinance requiring 20% of seating for nonsmokers. “If somebody wants to go to a no-smoking restaurant, that’s their prerogative.

“I have guys who come in here on weekends to watch sports, eat pizza and drink beer. And they like to smoke,” said Finnerty, who was a member of the council committee but held a minority opinion.

The Laguna Hills Chamber of Commerce is also coming to restaurant owners’ defense. In a letter to Mayor L. Allan Songstad Jr., the chamber is asking that the city grant eating establishments a variance from the ordinance.

“At this time you can go as little as half a mile to smoke freely” in a restaurant outside the city, said Craig Thomas, the chamber board’s chairman. “There is a fairness issue here.”