Following Ohio University's tobacco ban, Athens City Council members are considering writing an ordinance to ban smoking in city parks.
Out of the roughly thousand U.S. municipalities that have laws on the books to make all public parks smoke-free, Ohio is only home to three, and Athens isn’t one of them.
Athens City Council members heard a presentation at their meeting Monday night asking them to toss in Athens along with those cities.
Thaden Brient, an south side resident and father of a nine-year-old girl, pleaded for council to take a step forward into the antismoking movement.
“I’ve spent a lot of time at playgrounds and observed a lot of cigarette smoking,” Brient told council members.
That experience inspired Brient to spend 18 months collecting cigarette butts from South Side Park, the Athens Community Center and the park on Highland Avenue — all of which he brought with him in his backpack to the council meeting.
Brient focused on South Side Park, where he said he plucked an average of 10-16 cigarettes at the park during day time hours.
“I’ve talked to a lot of parents who have seen their children try to eat cigarette butts or at least play with them,” Brient said.
In a one-month period this summer, Brient collected 454 cigarette butts, not including butts in the ash trays.
Brient pushed council for an ordinance preventing public smoking in parks, saying that now there was the “perfect storm with the other smoke free movements going on around Athens.”
Ohio University’s Athens campus will be tobacco-free starting next fall.
“I really believe the city should have an ordinance that restricts cigarette smoking outdoors,” Brient said. “In a few years I believe Athens will be behind if we don’t.”
Though Brient only addressed cigarettes, Councilman Jeff Risner, D-2nd Ward, added that he thinks any new ordinance should include all tobacco products.
”Why not tobacco free?” Risner said, “If we’re moving in that direction, why don’t we move it all the way?”
Citing OU’s initiative, Brient agreed with Risner’s comments.
“That would line up with what OU is trying to do. What are the students going to do when they can’t smoke over there? They’re going to smoke over here.” Brient.
Councilman Steve Patterson, D-at large, said that he’s been toying with the idea of drafting an ordinance to limit public smoking for awhile now.
“During this year’s beautification day, in the last few moments, I gave people plastic bags and asked them to collect cigarette butts,” Patterson said.
According to Patterson, volunteers collected 4,982 cigarette butts.
He also hinted that an ordinance banning smoking in public parks may work itself into council’s agenda sometime soon.
“I think it’s timely that we become city number four,” Patterson said.
@emilybohatch
eb346012@ohio.edu
