HUD is right to end smoking in public housing

Secondhand smoke is dangerous. Sucking in carcinogens from someone else’s cigarette, cigar or pipe is responsible for the deaths of 41,000 nonsmokers each year, can cause Sudden Infant Death syndrome, respiratory problems and reduced lung function in children and increased risk of stroke in adults.

That’s why the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to eliminate smoking from the public housing it administers.

Doing so would create a healthier environment, particularly for those most sensitive — children and the elderly, who make up a large portion of public housing residents.

In addition, the department points out in its proposed rule, smoking is the leading cause of fires in public housing and banning it would reduce that hazard as well as the higher maintenance costs for cleaning and painting units where people smoke.

After a two-month public comment period, the proposed policy would require more than 3,100 public housing agencies to go smoke-free in several years.

Agencies would have to design policies that ban lighted tobacco in dwellings, indoor common areas, administrative offices and all outdoor areas within 25 feet.

The agencies could designate an outdoor smoking area farther from the buildings.

Some agencies already have implemented no-smoking policies in buildings — 21 of the county’s senior citizen high-rises among them.

Naturally, a no-smoking clause could easily be added to tenants’ leases, but that doesn’t mean ensuring compliance in the country’s 1.2 million public housing units will automatically follow.

Enforcement probably would be particularly challenging in newer accommodations, which are more likely to be single-family and small multiunit dwellings rather than the crowded cluster housing of an earlier era.

It might not be easy, but doing the right thing rarely is. HUD has proposed a necessary change for the better.

— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette