Boston To Make Public Housing Smoke-Free

Boston plans to ban smoking in all its public housing units next year. The city is sending letters to about 25,000 tenants of public housing units over the next few weeks to let them know their buildings will be smoke-free and that they will have to agree to the new policy when they sign their annual leases. The policy takes effect next September.

City housing officials tell The Boston Globe the policy is aimed at protecting nonsmokers, especially children, from breathing in secondhand cigarette smoke from neighboring units, which can cause asthma attacks, respiratory infections, lung cancer, and heart disease.

Jim Bergman, director of the nonprofit Smoke-Free Environments Law Project in Michigan, says Boston will be the largest public housing authority in the nation to adopt a system-wide ban.