Berkeley May Ban Smoking in Your Own House

The San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Berkeley, where residents take pride in exercising their personal freedoms and resisting government intrusion, is the site these days of a much different kind of movement - one to ban cigarette smoking from single-family homes.

A City Council member says a proposal to ban cigarette smoking in apartments and condos, where smoke can waft through ventilation systems, is not tough enough or fair. Councilman Jesse Arreguin says his fellow council members should consider expanding the proposed ban to include single-family homes where children, seniors or lodgers are present.

Cigarette smoking is already prohibited in Berkeley's commercial districts, parks and bus stops, and within 25 feet of any building open to the public, and the council plans to extend the ban to all apartments, condominiums and other multiunit buildings where secondhand smoke can spread.

But if Berkeley is really serious about protecting nonsmokers, it should ban smoking in the specified single-family homes as well, Arreguin argues in a proposal to toughen the proposed law.

The health Nazis plot their next scam.