Violators face fines of up to $1,000.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has banned people from smoking in their own apartments. On Tuesday, the San Francisco Examiner reports, the board voted 10–1 in favor of a bill, sponsored by retiring Supervisor Norman Yee, to prohibit smoking tobacco inside private dwellings in buildings with three or more units. Violators of the new law could receive fines of up to $1,000 for smoking. The version of the bill that passed out of committee last month had also applied to smoking legal cannabis. An amendment adopted by the board on Tuesday exempts marijuana from the ban. That change came at the behest of cannabis advocates who argued that the bill was a “classist” assault on apartment-dwelling medical marijuana users. “The legislation seeks to protect air quality for nonsmokers, but would do so at the cost of the health and civil liberties of cannabis users including seriously ill medical cannabis patients,” wrote Nina Parks of the city’s Cannabis Oversight Committee in a letter opposing Yee’s bill. “The ordinance would disallow smoking, but only for people in multi-unit residential buildings, meaning that San Franciscans who can afford to buy free-standing homes would be unaffected and could still smoke in peace.
