Supporters of the ban pointed out that cigarette smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, causing more than 480,000 deaths each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This is more than just a nuisance,” resident Katrina Preece told the city council in 2023 about the effects of secondhand smoke. “It is a painful and worrying health hazard.”
Often managers don’t want confrontation because it’s just a policy (…) We give them a tool
For decades, smoking was allowed in places like restaurants, shops, and even on airplanes.
According to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation, at least 84 other municipalities in California, including Beverly Hills, Culver City, Manhattan Beach and Pasadena, have banned smoking in some private apartment buildings.
The Carlsbad ordinance not only prohibits smoking in private homes, but also prohibits smoking on private balconies, porches, patios, courtyards, and common areas that are not designated as smoking areas. The law does not apply to single-family homes.
Mayor Keith Blackburn said during an August 2023 council meeting that a smoking ban would help property managers more easily enforce their anti-smoking policies. Several complexes in Carlsbad already have existing no-smoking clauses in their leases.
“Many times managers don’t want confrontation because it’s just policy or it’s in the lease and (the tenant) knows you’re not going to evict them for smoking,” Blackburn said. “So I looked into it and thought, at least for managers, we’re giving them a tool.”
Others fear that the law would place an unnecessary burden on property owners.
The city says police and law enforcement officers will not enforce the law because it has limited resources. Instead, landlords and other tenants can take legal action against violators.
Council member Melanie Burkholder, the only one to vote against the ban, said she believes it should not be the job of local police to tell residents whether they can smoke in their homes.
“It just seems kind of out of place,” she said during a meeting in 2023.
Will Creagan, chairman of Southwest Equity Partners – a property management company based in San Diego County – put it even more bluntly in a letter to the city council this month: “So you pass an ordinance and then tell the property managers, ‘You have to enforce this’ … good luck. This is another clear case of government overreach.”
The law will come into force in January.
