Butt Out: Co-ops and Condos Must Adopt Smoking Policies

Despite strong opposition from co-op and condo board advocates, Mayor Bill de Blasio has signed a package of seven bills designed to help reduce the number of smokers in New York City by 160,000 by 2020. One of the bills requires all boards to adopt a smoking policy – not a smoking ban – and disclose it to both current and prospective residents. Another bill prohibits smoking and the use of electronic cigarettes in common areas in residential buildings with three or more units. Crain’s reports that the city also has plans to crack down on illegal cigarette smuggling.

While smoking rates in New York City have declined from 21.5 percent in 2002 to 14.3 percent in 2015, the city still has more than 900,000 smokers. These new bills are designed to help decrease the smoking rate to 12 percent by 2020.

Stephen Budihas, president of the Association of Riverdale Cooperatives and Condominiums (ARC), which represents 130 Bronx buildings with 17,000 apartments, was an outspoken critic of the proposal to force all co-op and condo boards to adopt a smoking policy. “Co-ops and condos do not need any governmental intervention or direction in the establishment of their rules,” Budihas wrote to the city council. He told Habitat, “We all understand that smoking is dangerous, but that’s not the issue here. Now, for the first time, legislators want to force boards to establish a particular rule. To tell a board they must have a rule is opening a door I don’t want to go through.”

The bills signed by de Blasio will also raise the minimum price of cigarettes and little cigars to $13 a pack from $10.50; cut in half the number of stores licensed to sell tobacco products (the cut will be achieved through attrition, and no current tobacco retailers will lose their license); and increase the fee for a license to sell cigarettes.