The Alameda County board of supervisors does find that:

    Numerous studies have found that tobacco smoke is a major contributor to indoor air pollution, and that breathing secondhand tobacco smoke is a cause of disease, including lung cancer, in nonsmokers. At special risk are children, elderly people, individuals with cardiovascular disease and individuals with impaired respiratory function, including asthmatics and those with obstructive airway disease; and

    Health hazards induced by exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) include lung and other forms of cancer, respiratory infection, decreased respiratory function, including broncho-constriction and broncho-spasm, and premature death from heart disease.

    In 1989, the health care costs and lost productivity resulting from smoking-related disease and death amounted to three hundred seventy million dollars ($370,000,000.00) in Alameda County and represent a heavy and avoidable financial drain on our community.

    Section 6404.5 of the California Labor Code regulates smoking in California workplaces, and requires local governments to initiate enforcement of this law.

    The U.S. Surgeon General and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have found that a majority of those Americans who die of tobacco-caused diseases became addicted to nicotine in tobacco products as adolescents before the age of legal consent.

    The U.S. Surgeon General has declared that nicotine is as addictive as cocaine or heroin; no other addictive product or drug, or cancer-causing product or drug is sold through vending machines.

    The free distribution of cigarettes and other tobacco products encourages people to begin smoking and using tobacco products, and tempts those who had quit to begin smoking again. Minors currently have ready access to tobacco products as a result of noncompliance with existing laws that prohibit the furnishing of tobacco products to minors and the marketing practice of distributing free tobacco product samples and the widespread availability of tobacco vending machines.

    Accordingly, the Alameda County board of supervisors finds and declares that the purposes of this chapter are: (A) to protect the public health and welfare by prohibiting smoking in public places and places of employment not under the jurisdiction of state law; (B) to enforce the state law prohibiting smoking in the workplace; (C) to guarantee the rights of nonsmokers to breathe smoke-free air, and to recognize that the need to breathe smoke-free air shall have priority over the desire to smoke; (D) to reduce addiction to tobacco products by minors; and (E) to generally promote the health, safety, and welfare of all people in the county of Alameda against the health hazards and harmful effects of the use of tobacco products. (Ord. 98-6 § 1 (part))