Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates has proposed a plan to ban smoking along Telegraph and Shattuck streets, which he hopes will eliminate a large population of homeless people who loiter there. He also hopes that the potential success of this plan could prompt the city to implement a city-wide ban on smoking. Everything proposed seems favored by City Council members.
When I say "favored by," I really mean that the City Council is all over it. It doesn't seem like Bates can do wrong; when asked how to pay for it, Bates proposed the highly lame and Berkeley-esque strategy of raising metered parking prices by 50 cents an hour (to $1.50) to pay for the extra enforcement. You can find the article here:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/16/BAG40PRP5U1.DTL
So my question is this: where do the homeless go, if they can't smoke on the street? Probably back to People's Park or my front yard, because goodness knows that once the problem is out of public sight, it isn't a problem anymore, at all.
Nice try, Mayor. Californya-nya, super cool to the homeless...
Ifs, Ands, Butts, and the Homeless
By kfed - Posted on May 16th, 2007
We passed a very similar bill in my home city here in Portland just last year.
The gov banned all smoking from a large central park area which was, and still is, inhabited by groups of homeless people. The law was a success--kind of. While there are no more smokers hanging around the urban fauna that is our central park, they have just moved to the outskirts of the area to light up.
Now it's easy to locate the park--just look for the pillars of cigarette smoke rising from just outside its perimeter (just kidding).
Last year my campus legislature also banned all smoking anywhere on the campus. This didn't really work either. People just find different places to smoke, complaining (perhaps rightfully) all the way. Now the parking lots are like freaking smoky bowling alleys.
So maybe we should try and actually address the problem, instead of just redistributing it and spreading it around (gee, there's a novel thought!) Second-hand smoke is terrible and no one should be exposed to it. But first-hand smoke is bad too, and THAT problem needs to be adressed as well.
From my experience, legislature that bans smoking in certain areas has not done much to address second-hand smoke or the preservation of public spaces. It's just been a headache for all involved--smokers or not.
Cool post, kfed!
Allison
"Be the change you want to see in the world" ~Mahatma Gandhi
I am less concerned about smoking (though I know that all 25% of Cal students who say they smoke-- and there are at least 10% of reportedly non-smokers who 'socially smoke,' so this is more like 35%--would be pissed off about a city-wide smoking ban) than about the fact, as you said, that it doesn't actually solve the problem.
In the article, someone even said that people who are drug addicts also often smoke. If they're using drugs on the street, can't they get cited or arrested for that? Why does a ban on smoking promise that people on the street will leave?
The number of students who smoke at Berkeley far outnumber the homeless who line our streets, which suggests that proper enforcement would disproportionately punish students who are polite enough to stand on street corners to smoke than walk and let the smoke waft behind them, instead of keeping the homeless off the street. Students would probably get the point quickly enough, but I imagine it would overcrowd campus with smokers, as well as the dorm smoking areas... because that's the only non-city property in the city where students can smoke.
If Bates wants to ban smoking, it'll be, as you said, a big headache. But even worse is that his proposal doesn't address its problem, because it's causing another. He's trying to shove smoking onto campus and keep homelessness confined to People's Park (which is, as some know, University property) and private property.