USA: The government wants to ban smoking in public housing!

Always at the forefront in the fight against tobacco, the United States announced this Thursday their intention to go even further with the ban on smoking in all low-cost housing in the country, whether it pleases the tenants or not yet at home.

The text provides that cigarettes, pipes and cigars will be banned from all living quarters, all administrative offices, all common interior areas and finally exterior areas within a radius of eight meters.
The measure was presented by the charismatic Secretary for Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, former elected of Texas. "We have the responsibility to protect the inhabitants of public park housing from the harmful consequences of passive smoking.e, "said this rising star of the Democratic Party.The draft regulation will help improve the health of more than 760 children and allow public housing agencies save $ 153 million annually in health coverage, maintenance and preventable fires“, He again justified. The measure presented by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development would not be a total novelty. Since 2009, he has encouraged HLM agencies to set up smoke-free residences on a voluntary basis. More than 228 apartments are already non-smoking. The new rules would increase this number to 940 000 apartments.

An attack on individual freedom?

This measure, however, risks making the teeth of thousands of Americans cringe, both smokers and living in low-cost housing, who will probably see it as an infringement of their individual freedom. Enforcement of the regulation It will also represent an additional burden for already overcrowded American HLM agencies. This ban will be part of the arsenal of very restrictive anti-smoking laws in force in the United States, one of the countries most frequently cited as an example in this field. The crackdown on smoking has borne fruit over the years. Alone 15% adults smoke in America, the lowest proportion in decades. In France, this percentage is almost twice as high (28%By way of comparison, more than four out of ten Americans (42%) smoked in 1965, according to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Smoking remains the number one preventable cause of death in the United States, however, causing the death of some 480.000 people each year, according to US health authorities.