A few more thoughts about smoking in the parks

For a seminar assignment in my junior year of college, our professor, Mr. Dalzell, asked us each to fill a shoe box with something that represented American culture. I stuffed a deflated football in mine, writing a prosaic essay about the violence and thrill of the game. "Do you mean that the culture itself is the football?" Mr. Dalzell asked. His idea -- more subtle than my own -- stayed with me this week as I read the comments people sent me in response to my column about Linda York, the San Jose woman who called the cops to enforce the city's no-smoking ordinance at the Jeffrey Fontana Dog Park.

I had asked whether we should pass ordinances we cannot really enforce. Nearly half of the four dozen comments I got favored the anti-smoking ordinance anyway. About a quarter felt the law went too far. Altogether, they made me understand that this issue isn't so much a matter of absolute fiat. Like Mr. Dalzell's notion of culture, it's more like a football being moved up the field. A few people felt the city should not have an ordinance. "If a law cannot be enforced, it should not be on the books," wrote Richard Fodor, of San Jose.

"I dislike smelling cigarette smoke outdoors, but our lawmakers should stop trying to mother citizens." Others felt that the cops should respond to such calls. "I applaud the woman who stood up for what she believed in and called the police," wrote Peninsula reader Jennifer Powell. "If only they responded with support instead of passively aggressively reprimanding her for wasting their time." Unenforced laws Perhaps the most persuasive notes came from folks who had thought through the possibility that cops cannot always be there.

One was Margo Sidener, the president and CEO of Breathe California, a key mover behind the smoking ordinances. Sidener wrote that the world is filled with so-called unenforced laws -- carpool lanes, pet laws, etc. But she said most folks understand there are reasons to keep them. "We have lots less dog bites, stepping in dog doo-doo, running red lights than we would without them. The same is true for smoking control ordinances." "There may not be the resource to enforce it," wrote John R. Mashey, of Portola Valley.

"But it certainly gives people who want to complain some moral backup to do it if they want." Me? I have sympathy for the cop who tried to explain to York that this was a low-priority call. I work out of the Mercury News bureau at City Hall, where you cannot escape knowing about manpower shortages. But I'm convinced, with Mashey, that the law can offer a template for talk. The best answers are probably better signs and more education.