Pasadena Mayor’s Fund-Raiser Draws Huffs and Puffs

A fund-raising “smoker” to be hosted by Pasadena Mayor Bill Paparian on the Rose Bowl’s turf tonight has health advocates, school officials and some residents all fired up.

But the mayor says the debate over the event--at which participants are to pay $110 each to smoke cigars from 6 to 8 p.m.--only has made it more popular.

“The ‘controversy’ has increased popularity beyond original expectations,” said Paparian, who expects more than 50 people to show up.

Yet detractors are angry that the mayor of a city with tough anti-smoking laws would host such an event.

“Here is the mayor giving a tacit endorsement to smoking. I think it’s rather outrageous,” said Gary Pia, president of the Pasadena-based San Gabriel Valley unit of the American Cancer Society.

“If Mayor Paparian enjoys a fine cigar in private, I have no problem with that,” Pia said. “But to do something like this as a civic leader is rather shortsighted. He’s overlooked the broader message this sends.”

It is even more disappointing since Pasadena was one of the first cities to ban smoking in restaurants and public buildings, Pasadena Schools Health Director Patricia Lachelt said. To no avail, she wrote Paparian asking him to cancel the event.

“We fear youth will see this as another example of, ‘Do what I say, not what I do,’ ” she said.

Paparian sees nothing wrong with the event to raise money for the Mayor’s Fund, a discretionary budget to pay expenses associated with his ceremonial office.

“I have a deep appreciation of the impact of smoke,” said Paparian, who noted that he and his son suffer from bronchitis and that his father was a chronic smoker who was forced to have a heart bypass. “But I still think it’s fun to light up a cigar once in a while as a means of fellowship between people.”

Paparian, who said he has received letters supporting the “smoker,” stressed that participation is voluntary. And because of the event’s outdoor location, there will be no problems with secondhand smoke, he said.

At a recent council session, resident Roy Begley called the mayor a hero for standing up for smokers’ civil liberties.

But Pia said: “This isn’t a matter of personal choice. This is a matter of public health. What we’re talking about here is a civic leader taking a position counter to the city’s position. Tobacco is only product that kills when used as intended.”