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Oceanside To Consider Smoking Ban On Restaurant Patios

Anthony Chavez of Fallbrook is pictured using the “smoking patio” at Tremont Street Bar and Grill in Oceanside in this undated photo.
Promise Yee
Anthony Chavez of Fallbrook is pictured using the “smoking patio” at Tremont Street Bar and Grill in Oceanside in this undated photo.

Oceanside City Council will vote Wednesday on an ordinance that will ban smoking on restaurant and bar outdoor patios.

Mayor Jim Wood said 90 percent of Californians are nonsmokers, and a city regulation helps restaurant owners say no to smokers. Oceanside is the last North County coastal city to consider such a ban.

“That helps the people who don’t want the smoke in their face or secondhand smoke, along with the owners of the business and the employees, to be able to say ‘you can’t smoke here there’s an ordinance,’" Wood said. " I think it’s the right thing to do.”

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In June of 2013, Wood and Councilmen Jack Feller and Gary Felien voted against a limited smoking ban. That proposed ordinance would have outlawed smoking on restaurant patios adjacent to public streets, but allowed smoking on patios next to private streets or on second floors. The law satisfied some, but Wood saw it as providing an unfair loophole.

Oceanside business owners who opposed the measure said they had benefited from being the only place on San Diego’s north coast to allow smoking on outdoor patios.

Kimberly Marrs, owner of Tremont Street Bar and Grill in downtown Oceanside, and others asked the City Council in 2013 to allow restaurant owners to make the call.

“I want to make my business thrive,” Marrs said. “After Carlsbad passed its ban on smoking a lot of business came to Oceanside. Smoking is not an illegal activity. Let us make the call, especially coming out of an economic downfall.”

Some restaurant owners still oppose the measure, but a number of other restaurant owners have signed a support letter in favor of the new ordinance,

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The current smoking ordinance takes the regulation a step further and includes all restaurant and bar patios.

Corrected: March 28, 2024 at 4:35 AM PDT
Promise Yee is a North County freelance writer. Contact her at promise.yee.1@gmail.com. Twitter: @promisenews. Facebook: promise.yee.1.