LAX Sidewalks Must Be Smoke-Free

It’s now possible to live and work in Los Angeles without being subjected to annoying and unhealthful secondhand smoke much of the time. This includes workplaces and restaurants.

In my own experience, the single worst remaining place in L.A. for anyone who likes to breathe are the publicly owned and managed sidewalks outside the terminals at LAX. While the space inside the terminals is protected and smoke-free, the area just outside the terminals, where passengers anxiously wait for their ground transportation, is replete with nervous, stressed-out people who often choose to punish themselves and all the innocent bystanders around them by puffing away.

I’m already stressed out enough when I go to the airport that I don’t need or want to be confronted by hordes of cigarette-smoking strangers standing inexorably between me and where I have to go. They are consumed by their own addiction and utterly unwilling to extend any consideration to anyone else.

The only way to stop them is to make their destructive public behavior illegal. Making a behavior illegal is not always enough to put an end to it, but prohibiting a dangerous and socially irresponsible behavior in a public place that is more intensely patrolled by the police than any other in town should certainly do a lot to reduce its incidence.

The argument that this dangerous and costly activity ought to be permitted in an “outdoor” area such as the sidewalks at LAX is completely spurious. These sidewalks, at least on the lower level, are really covered walkways enclosed by ceilings that extend for 30 or 40 feet to the airport’s main thoroughfare for vehicular traffic. The airflow situation on the upper level is not much better. Overall, the LAX sidewalks are about as “outdoors” as the space inside a covered sports stadium.

Furthermore, this unhealthy and anti-social behavior is now taking place on land owned, controlled and administered by the city of Los Angeles, which therefore has direct and total jurisdiction over it. Public cigarette smoking in a place traversed by thousands of people daily shouldn’t be tolerated any more than it would be if it were taking place in the City Council chambers.

Fortunately, the City Council has as much power to end this practice at LAX as it does in the space where it transacts its own public business. I certainly hope it will do so at the earliest possible opportunity.