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Eye-catching new signs designating Lexington’s public parks and trails as smoke, vape and tobacco free areas have been installed as the city joins more than a dozen cities, towns and counties throughout Virginia in the Share the Air campaign.
The initiative was first pitched to the Lexington City Council back in May by members of the Rockbridge County High School Y Street Club which focuses on engaging communities and encouraging healthy living. Y Street is a youth-led program of the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth.
“I personally support this campaign because I, myself, am a runner here in Lexington,” said Evan Roney, one of the members of the Y Street Club who addressed Council.
“I run cross country and track and field and I like to run my sister. I frequent trails like the Chessie Trail [and] the Woods Creek Trail, and I would absolutely love not to have to worry about coming across second-hand smoke while on these runs with my younger sibling, so that’s why I support the campaign.”
Maliyah Hickling, another member of the club, spoke about how cigarette smoke can be dangerous for people with medical conditions like asthma, which she has.
“With tobacco and e-cigarette usage, the chances for [my siblings and I] to be outside and pick up anything that can be put into environment is very easy,” she said. “I have smoke-induced asthma, so it makes it really bad on my lungs if I’m outside and I breathe in smoke, second-hand smoke, etc.”
Roney noted that tobacco products make up 40 percent of all litter in the United States and that discarded smoking materials can cause fires. According to the National Fire Center, there have been three fires in the past three years caused by discarded smoking materials, including one in Fairfax County in 2020 which caused over $48 million in damage.
Several members of City Council expressed their approval of the campaign and the new signs. Charles Aligood observed that the signs are “very appealing and eyecatching,” while Leslie Straughan noted that the new signs included e-cigarettes, which the city’s existing signage prohibiting smoking in public parks did not.
City Council unanimously voted to join the campaign pending a review of some language in the agreement by City Attorney Jeremy Carroll. In particular, there was concern about the phrasing regarding enforcement of the policy, which is voluntary under the Share the Air campaign.
The section of the agreement in question read, “If a person continues to violate the voluntary compliance, an owner, manager, or park employee can inform the person that a violation constitutes a nuisance.”
Carroll worked with Share the Air to amend that section of the agreement, which was changed to read that a person continuing to violate the voluntary compliance, an owner, manager, etc., “can inform that person of the voluntary policy and encourage that person to comply.”
The agreement with the amended language was signed by City Manager Jim Halasz on Aug. 1. The signs were then delivered to the city and put up at the end of last week.
Established in 1999 by the Virginia General Assembly, the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth empowers Virginia’s youth to make healthy choices by reducing and preventing youth tobacco and nicotine use, substance use, and childhood obesity. Y Street, founded in 2004, is the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth’s teen volunteer group for high school students.
