Sonoma County and city score highest grade for smoking limits

Cloverdale and Windsor got credit for passing new laws regulating tobacco use in the American Lung Association’s latest annual report, which also gave the city of Sonoma and the unincorporated areas of Sonoma County top grades for the second straight year.

The city and county of Sonoma were among 31 communities statewide that received an overall grade of A in the association’s 16th annual State of Tobacco Control report released this week.

Windsor and Cloverdale both made the report’s list of cities and counties “On the Rise” for enacting smoke-free housing laws and strengthening tobacco retail sales rules last year.

Windsor’s grade improved from a D last year to a B, while Cloverdale, given an F last year, moved up to C, enabling the county - for the first time - to get a tobacco control report card with no D’s or F’s, said Vanessa Marvin, a spokeswoman for the association.

Cotati, Healdsburg, Petaluma, Santa Rosa and Sebastopol received B’s, with Rohnert Park getting a C.

The grading system rates communities for rules against smoking outdoors in public places and indoors in multi-?family complexes, as well as laws aimed at reducing tobacco sales to minors.

Smoking bans in apartments and condominiums are intended to protect residents, especially children, from second-hand smoke that can drift from one unit to the next, Marvin said.

“That’s really devastating,” she said. “Home is the place where they really should be safe.”

And while the state issues licenses to stores that sell tobacco products, Marvin said there is little enforcement of the prohibition against sales to people under 21. The association urges cities and counties to establish licensing that can lead to local law enforcement decoy operations aimed at catching merchants who sell to minors.

“We want to encourage more of that,” she said, noting the goal is “stopping kids from starting” to smoke.

In Sonoma County, only Healdsburg, Sonoma and the unincorporated area have tobacco retail licensing laws, according to the report.

California, meanwhile, led the nation on tobacco-control policies due largely to voter-approved Proposition 56, which increased the cigarette tax by $2 per pack, effective last April, generating a cash flow to state health programs.

Mark Johnson, board chairman of the American Lung Association in California, said in a press release he personally witnessed its impact as “one of my close relatives, a long-time smoker, finally quit the day the tobacco tax went into effect.”

But Marvin noted that half of California’s population lives in communities that got D’s and F’s on the report card and 11 percent of adults still smoke.

“Smoking rates continue to decline in California, yet tobacco use remains the state’s leading cause of preventable death and disease, killing nearly 40,000 Californians each year,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. ?On Twitter @guykovner.