Smoking bans in public buildings and restaurants became federal legislation in 2011, but London's city council is supporting a bill that goes even further... sort of. The ban is more of a "bubble" that requires smokers to maintain an established distance from playground equipment, public park amenities and entrances to public buildings. The ban was introduced as a response to a proposal by the Middlesex-London Health Unit that identified six potential options for limiting smoking in public spaces. The Health Unit recommended the sixth option, which was to introduce a complete ban on smoking anywhere in a public park.

The first of the six options they presented was to leave the situation as it is currently while the sixth was an outright ban on smoking anywhere in a public park. The strategies got progressively more far-reaching moving down the list, and so it should come as no surprise that council ignored the Health Unit and voted for the safe middle ground: option three.

Option three consists of a nine-metre perimeter around playground equipment, amenities and public building entrances. The only other option that's less invasive is option two, which consisted of placing signs in parks that simply ask people not to smoke near public facilities.

The reality is that this legislation will have virtually the same effect as if they'd selected either option one or two because none are likely to make a difference. By choosing to introduce a bylaw as opposed to awareness campaigns, they stand to lose the goodwill so crucial to compliance. By all standards, city council safely side-stepped the issue by introducing an option that is nearly impossible to enforce and borders on meaningless. A nine-metre perimeter from park equipment would involve, in at least half a dozen parks in the city, leaving the path to avoid walking directly past facilities. The primary enforcement of this bylaw will conceivably be the occasional police foot-patrol through Victoria Park, trying to explain to people that they can't smoke in this specific part of the park.

Between comments by Councillor Dale Henderson undermining the dangers of cancer related to smoking and his subsequent apology, the debate this time around has been a lively one. The topic of smoking bans has cropped up on multiple occasions in the past few years in London including last November when city council shot down a proposal, also by the Health Unit, that recommended a smoking ban on restaurant and bar patios. The fear of lost business was sufficient to quash concerns about secondhand smoke inhalation by restaurant and bar staff as well as children. It seems hypocritical that council will ban smoking from parks where, at worst, a parent could lead their child upwind, while refusing to ban it in a serving environment where staff are working to earn a living. Council needs to go back to the drawing board and look at comprehensive ways to address smoking instead of drawing imaginary lines on the ground.
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