County may be close to outdoor smoke ban

Salt Lake County appears to be inching closer to a smoking ban in outdoor parks and recreation venues, but officials are still fine-tuning the proposed health regulation.

Salt Lake Valley Board of Health members made it clear Thursday morning that they plan to ban smoking outdoors in public areas within the county, although they have not yet voted to support any specific regulation.

Such a ban is also widely supported by smokers, said Thomas Guinney, longtime health board member.

The idea was first suggested by a coalition of teenagers who oppose tobacco use and is directed at "preserving spaces where children are outdoors as smoke-free areas," Darrin Sluga, county health department tobacco program manager, told the Deseret Morning News when the board first considered it.

Since then, the health board has been looking at whether an outdoor equivalent of the Utah Indoor Clean Air Act could be passed, banning smoking in public parks, venues like Wheeler Farm, the Jordan River Parkway and Hogle Zoo, as well as playgrounds, baseball diamonds, swimming pools and similar sites.

The board Thursday morning asked that the proposal, "SLVHD Proposed Regulation #34," be tweaked to include the Fairgrounds and Snowbird's Oktoberfest. The regulation would otherwise not apply to ski resorts, or country clubs and golf courses.

Under the proposal, "a person located within the boundaries of any public park, outdoor children and animal venue, public garden, playground, play pit, sandbox, sporting area, gathering place or pathway in Salt Lake County who is found smoking and refuses to refrain from smoking after being issued both an oral and written warning from a law enforcement officer creates a physically offensive condition and may be cited for disorderly conduct. . . ."

Littering ordinances would apply to anyone who improperly disposed of tobacco-related items in those settings.

Primary responsibility for getting the word out in each venue would belong to the owner or operator, who would be required to post no-smoking signs, including some using the international symbol of a lit cigarette in the middle of a red circle with a slash through it. Failure to post the signs would be a class B misdemeanor, while smoking would be an infraction.

The board has indicated it prefers a total ban to establishing some kind of "separation distance" in the affected venues, said Dan Kinnersley, director of Community Health Services in the Salt Lake Valley Health Department.