Vasquez Wants Smoking Restrictions

Councilman Fernando Vasquez wants the City Council to restrict smoking cigarettes at parks and public gatherings.

Vasquez requested the council consider the issue at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
“I really only want restrictions in public areas, like parks, or at special events, like Taste of Downey,” he said. “I don’t want any restrictions on private property. None at all.”

He mentioned an effort by the Kiwanis Green Team this month in which members of the team collected 4,000 cigarette butts at Downey’s Parks.

The Green Team is a group of environmentally concerned youth.

“I mean, the right of a child to breathe healthy air at a clean park should supersede the right of people to smoke around kids,” Vasquez said.

Vasquez’s efforts are sure to meet stiff resistance from Councilman Mario Guerra, who unsuccessfully tried to shoot down a similar effort in August. But the issue never came to vote because Vasquez was absent from the meeting.

Guerra, who quit smoking five years ago, said outside forces, particularly the American Lung Association, were pushing residents to campaign for smoking restrictions.

“I just feel like’s it’s a non-issue,” he said. “I have just never seen a situation where an adult was smoking in the bleachers around a bunch of kids. People don’t do it. It’s just normal human politeness to not light up around kids.”

The cigarette butts are “a littering problem, not a smoking problem. And we have laws against littering,” he said.

Luis Marquez is on the record as supporting Vasquez.