Smoking in Parks and at Transit Stops

• Understandably everyone has a right to clean air. Unfortunately the battle between the smokers and the non(s) will most likely endure until the federal government decides to skip the post coital cig it has shared for well over a century with the American Tobacco Industry and enact legislation prohibiting it’s sale or use. Until then smokers in parks and muni shelters pose as much of a threat to public safety as does sitting on a hill of ants in the same park. Let’s try to stay focused on the real issue: keeping our public areas free from gang and drug related activities and free of de facto homeless encampments. Plainclothes police to monitor renegade nicotine use? Let’s not give the board of supervisors another means to misappropriate city and county tax dollars in the guise of making San Francisco safer and/or more beautiful. Remember the public pay toilet debacle of the mid 1990’s? 

Perhaps, there can be defined areas throughout the city where people can smoke. I have heard on the news a while back that smoke shops have opened up throughout the east bay with seated areas and plant-lined gates.

The major problem would be find or creating numerous locations throughout the city where people can smoke.

I find it ironically coincidental that SF usually has the best air quality on spare the air days, yet has the so many smokers.

http://www.sparetheair.org/Stay-Informed/Todays-Air-Quality/Five-Day-Forecast.aspx

I am a non-smoker and am annoyed by second hand smoke.  I find myself walking faster to get past people who are smoking as they walk down the street just because I find the smoke irritating.  On the other hand, people have a right to smoke and there are far more annoying things in SF where I'd like to see local ordinances enforced.  

Get the homeless out of GG Park and off the streets for starters.  I don't care whether they smoke or not.  Get a few big fire department tanker trucks and go through the parks and down the streets and clean up with fire hoses.  I am far more annoyed by graffiti than I am by second hand smoke.  If someone is smoking I can just walk a few steps and be upwind of them.  Graffiti is ugly and in my neighborhood I have to go get a can of paint to clean it up.  Yes it would be nice if people were more considerate about smoking, but for me, personally, there are other quality of life issues that bother me far more.

g cotter- This is the third comment of yours that takes pot shots at the homeless. It's appalling. Where is your humanity?!

After reading this comment, I seriously wonder if you have mental health issues , if so, it's very likely that you could find yourself living on the streets.

As for smoking, I'd rather have an anti-public smoking ordinance- sometimes breathing someone's second hand smoke on the street is unavoidable- and it's a health hazard.

Since the homeless are non-carcinogenic, how about using the proceeds from tickets given to smokers for homeless services including; mental health care, low income housing, job training, and child care and parenting classes for single mothers who have been displaced due to a lack of education, a lack of job opportunities, teen pregnancy, and abuse.

Smokers pay fines in the form of sin taxes on every pack. I'm sorry if you don't find the odor pleasant when walking outdoors, but until you're willing to support ticketing people with bad B.O. I don't think it's a fair argument. There is no health issue as there isn't prolonged exposure and it dissipates almost immediately.
 

I think it's really hard on homeowners if someone does graffiti on the side of their house, etc. and they have to pay to have it painted over. Some neighborhoods have this problem more than others, of course. What I'd like to see is more being done to catch these people who are doing damage to property not their own. If they are juveniles, their parents should be made to pay for the costs of the repainting, AND when/if they are caught, the perpetrators should be made to eliminate the graffiti by painting over it themselves. The problem is catching them, of course, but I think the law isn't strict enough. One sees graffiti all over the buses as well. 

As someone who was homeless for a few years not that long ago, I appreciate hearing some compassion. I feel so blessed to have escaped that misery, days like the last few make me remember just how grateful I am to have a roof and warm dry clothes and blankets, access to hot tea or cocoa. I think waging war on the city's already broken citizens is not the answer to anything. I am all for fining illegal smokers to help the homeless, but this would become a weapon against those it was supposed to be helping. There are a whole list of ticketable and arrestable offenses that are regularly selectively enforced against the homeless. This would become another of those "crimes of homelessness"...