City Council Bans Free Distribution Of Cigarettes

The Cambridge City Council voted 5-4 to bun the free public distribution of tobacco products in the city at its weekly meeting last Monday.

Proponents of the ban, including a Brookline based anti-smoking group, said distributors are luring young children into smoking, which the U.S. Surgeon General has ruled a health danger.

A lobbyist for The Tobacco Institute argued at the meeting that the ban represents "discrimination" against the tobacco industry's constitutional right to advertise.

Cambridge and Newton are the only Massachusetts municipalities with such a restriction. Only a handful of cities nationwide have enacted the ban.