First New York City banned smoking at bars and restaurants. This week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a no-smoking law covering city parks, beaches and pedestrian plazas like Times Square. The next place where the mayor supports a smoking ban: bus stops.

On his weekly radio show, Bloomberg responded affirmatively when a caller asked whether he’d consider expanding the ban to include bus stops.

“Well, personally, I couldn’t agree with you more,” the mayor, a former smoker, told the caller. “I don’t want to stand down wind of somebody smoking because the smoke kills you.”

Bloomberg said if the public demands a ban on smoking at bus stops, city government may take up the cause, as he said it did when New Yorkers urged the newly passed ban on beaches and parks. That law, signed by the mayor on Tuesday, will take effect May 23.

“If there’s a big outcry for bus stops, that’s the ways to get it done,” Bloomberg said Friday. “I think that if you’re smoking near somebody, you should have some common sense and make sure you’re not upwind of them.”

Despite the mayor’s apparent enthusiasm for a smoking ban at bus stops, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn signaled she would not support the idea.

“The speaker is not open at this time to this particular idea of limiting smoking at bus stops,” said Maria Alvarado, Quinn’s spokeswoman. “People should, however, be mindful and sensitive to others around them when smoking in areas like bus stops.”

Audrey Silk, a retired NYPD officer and founder of Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, a smokers’ rights group, said she isn’t surprised by the mayor’s remarks. “They’re incrementalists — when you let them have one space, they’re coming for the next space.”

“Our homes being next,” she said. “It’s a public persecution policy.”

Silk also pointed out that when a bus rolls up, its tail pipe is at the same height as a stroller.

Another caller on the mayor’s radio show, who appeared opposed to the ban on smoking in parks, asked the mayor what he thought John Lennon of the Beatles would think of the smoking ban in Central Park.

“Well, I don’t know,” the mayor replied. “We could probably ask Paul McCartney.”

The mayor noted that many more people smoked years ago than they do now. “The world has changed,” he said. “So, what John Lennon might have thought then maybe different than what he thinks today.”

(Source: WSJ)