The joy of smoke-free apartment buildings
But it's tough to force landlord to change rules in existing structures
You've come a long way, baby.
Those who grew up in the '60s and '70s - including Judith Perkins and Linda Jennings - will immediately recognize that simple declarative sentence for what it is: the wildly successful advertising slogan for the 1968 premiere of Virginia Slims cigarettes. First test marketed in San Francisco, they were, according to the U.S. surgeon general, a thinly disguised attempt by Philip Morris to "link smoking to women's freedom, emancipation and empowerment."
Now, 40 years later, Perkins and Jennings - who remember the days when people lit up with impunity in restaurants, theaters, the workplace and college classrooms - are enjoying a different kind of empowerment: As residents of San Francisco's first new apartment building with a smoking ban, they are celebrating the right to breath smoke-free air in their homes.
"I'm delighted about that," says Perkins, who recently moved into a unit at Buena Vista Terrace. "I think it's great. I wish all places were like that."
"Wow," says Jennings. "This is pioneering, isn't it?"
Built by Citizens Housing Corp., a nonprofit developer dedicated to preserving and increasing affordable housing for poor residents, Buena Vista Terrace is part of a growing, nationwide movement to ban smoking in privately owned apartments and condominiums.
From Michigan's Kalamazoo County to Carlsbad in San Diego County, more and more landlords, for a variety of reasons, are snuffing out smoking in their buildings. And while one of the last bastions of the smoker is under assault, the thorny, unresolved legal issues make it difficult, if not impossible, for many apartment house dwellers to extricate themselves from a toxic environment.
The issue is secondhand smoke. In 2006, a report issued by the U.S. surgeon general concluded that tens of thousands of Americans were dying each year as a result of exposure to secondhand smoke. That same year, the California Air Resources Board declared secondhand smoke a toxic air contaminant with no safe level of exposure.
SOURCE :
http://articles.sfgate.com
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