Hub seeks more bans on tobacco
Sales at drugstores, on campuses targeted
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Cigarette sales at Boston drugstores and on college campuses would be banned under sweeping new tobacco control rules likely to win initial approval today from health regulators.
The restrictions, which would give Boston among the toughest antismoking laws in the nation, could go into effect early next year. The rules would also stamp out smoking on the patios of restaurants and bars with outside service; tobacco use has been banned inside since 2003. And, after a five-year grace period, the city would shutter cigar bars, swank salons catering to tobacco connoisseurs, which were exempt from the earlier regulation.
The measures - opposed by drugstore chains and tobacco companies, which argue that the rules unfairly limit businesses' right to sell a legal product - place Boston at the vanguard of a campaign to further reduce cigarette smoking, especially among young people and the poor.
Starting later this month, smokers in San Francisco will no longer be able to buy cigarettes in pharmacies.
Concern about the health of restaurant and bar workers exposed to secondhand smoke prompted the push to prohibit cigarettes from those establishments' patios, among the last remaining public haunts of smokers, said Barbara Ferrer, the city's top health official.
And the city decided to target sales at the 74 pharmacies in Boston, she said in a telephone interview, because stocking tobacco, the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, is incompatible with the mission of a drugstore.
"Why, in a place where people go to get healthy and get information about staying healthy, would you want to sell something that has absolutely no redeeming value and ends up killing a lot of people?" said Ferrer, executive director of the Boston Public Health Commission.
"We know that about 10 percent of Boston high school students are still taking up tobacco smoking. Is there something else we can do here to stop that?" she said.
But Dr. Michael Siegel, a tobacco control specialist at Boston University School of Public Health, predicted that making sales illegal at pharmacies and college convenience stores will do little to dissuade the determined smoker.
"What it's going to do is simply shift the places where people get cigarettes," Siegel said.
Using public health law to bar pharmacies from selling cigarettes amounts to overreaching, he added.
"I just don't see the government's role in regulating the consistency of the mission of a store," Siegel said. "Just to extend this, should the public health mission also ban the sale of candy bars in pharmacies? If we're going to get rid of cigarettes, why don't we also get rid of soda? We know soda causes obesity."
The stricter tobacco regulations - which also would block smoking in hotels, something that many hoteliers already do - were drafted at the direction of Public Health Commission board members and with the blessing of Mayor Thomas M. Menino. The public will have its say, both in writing and at a public hearing that will be scheduled later.
The rules substantially increase fines against violators of existing tobacco regulations. Retailers caught selling to underage smokers now face a maximum penalty of $400; that would increase to $2,000.
The drive to take whatever measures necessary to lower smoking rates - one of every six adults in Boston smokes - reflects the city's expansive tradition of public health enforcement. And a top official of a national antitobacco campaign said the Boston initiative foreshadows similar moves across the state and the nation. Massachusetts was also among the first states to ban restaurant and bar smoking.
"This is the direction the society is going in," said Bill Corr, executive director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. "I think other cities across the state will be following Boston's example."
The nation's two major pharmacy chains and one of the biggest tobacco manufacturers weren't as enthusiastic.
In a statement, Walgreens spokeswoman Carol Hively said the company was concerned that the regulations would inconvenience consumers, who would be forced to make multiple stops if they could not buy cigarettes at drugstores.
"Customers who purchase tobacco products in our stores also would lose the benefit of having pharmacists available to counsel them on how to quit smoking and lose the benefit of seeing smoking-cessation products," Hively said.
Neither chain would disclose how much of its revenue is generated by tobacco sales. The rules would also apply to grocery stores with pharmacies.
John Singleton, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. spokesman, said that while his firm, maker of Camel and Winston brands, does not believe the ban will significantly hurt sales, it does trammel on businesses' right to sell what they want to sell.
The prohibition against tobacco sales on college campuses would apply to convenience stores such as those operated by 660 Corporation, which rents space from Boston University on its main campus as well as at the South End medical school campus.
Tobacco products account for as much as two-fifths of sales at the average Massachusetts convenience store, according to an industry group.
"Clearly, it's not going to be good for us," said Chris Christensen, the company's director of operations. "But in the end, if this has any political headwind to it, it'll take that course no matter what I think."
Peter Christie, president of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, said his group will not fight the ban against smoking on patios. "To be very honest, I think it's a done deal," he said. "I don't think it will have much of an effect on business. Most of the patios I know do not allow it now."
Midday diners in the Back Bay offered opposite reactions to the proposal.
Amber Duran, who was having lunch outside at Stephanie's on Newbury, said it never made much sense to allow smoking on patios.
You're outside to enjoy the fresh air, she said.
Nearby at Bottega Fiorentina, three BU students sat on the patio, enjoying lunch. Anna Watkin, a 21-year-old junior from Switzerland, described the ban as a "terrible idea" and vowed to stop going out for lunch if it became illegal to smoke on patios.
With that, she shared a smoke with her pal Natalia Gutierrez, also a BU junior, flicking the ashes over a fence.
Globe correspondent Casey Ramsdell contributed to this report.
