BOSTON -- Boston Mayor Martin Walsh joined public health officials, advocates, local youth and former Red Sox player Curt Schilling to announce that he will take steps to prohibit the use of smokeless tobacco and other tobacco products at baseball parks, including Fenway Park, and other professional and amateur sports venues in Boston.
The ordinance will ban smokeless tobacco or any other tobacco product at event sites for professional, collegiate, high school or organized amateur sporting events, including baseball, softball, football, basketball, hockey, track and field, field hockey, lacrosse and soccer, as well as any other event involving a game or other athletic competition organized by a league or association.
“Smokeless tobacco” refers to any product that contains cut, ground, powdered or leaf tobacco and is intended to be placed in the oral or nasal cavity, including, but not limited to snuff, chewing tobacco, dipping tobacco, dissolvable tobacco products and snus.
Those managing the event sites will be responsible for maintaining compliance with the ordinance. The city will post signs at entrances to sites as well as dugouts, bullpens, training and locker rooms and press boxes.
The city will fine any person found in violation of the ordinance $250 per offense.
Walsh will officially file an ordinance with the City Council on August 10; it will take effect April 1, 2016.
"Our baseball parks are places for creating healthy futures, and this ordinance is about doing the right thing as a community for our young people," said Mayor Walsh. "The consequences of smokeless tobacco are real, and we must do all that we can to set an example. I look forward to working with the City Council to keep Boston on the leading edge in creating healthy communities for our young people."
"I am in support of banning any kind of tobacco at Fenway Park or in any public location," said Schilling. "I have seen cancer take the lives of people very important to me like my father, a lifelong smoker and I have endured the insufferable agony of radiation to the head/neck. If this law stops just one child from starting, it's worth the price. Because that child could be yours, or mine."
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