Bowie, MD Public Conduct: Outdoor Smoking Restrictions (2026)

Section 15-8 defines 'city property' broadly, to reach any park, building or other facility or real property owned by the City of Bowie or occupied by the City as a tenant under a third-party lease, including sidewalks and parking lots that abut it, though the article carves out sidewalks or rights-of-way that instead abut private property. Section 15-9A bans smoking anywhere on that City property, but a person may smoke inside a vehicle parked in a City parking lot so long as the doors and windows stay completely closed, an exception the section itself immediately narrows by prohibiting any smoking in City-owned vehicles regardless.

Section 15-9B extends the ban to City employees on duty in any capacity, on or off City property, while carving out an authorized break in a place where public smoking is otherwise allowed. Section 15-9D lets the City Manager post signs announcing the ban and its penalties, and § 15-9E lets smoking continue, at a tenant's discretion, on City-owned property already under a private lease predating the 2011 ordinance, through any extension the tenant is entitled to under that lease. Section 15-10 backs the ban with a dual penalty: any violation of § 15-9 is itself declared a public nuisance, letting the City eject the smoker from the park, building or facility on the spot, and a violation of the public smoking ban in § 15-9A is additionally a municipal infraction carrying a flat $50 fine, while an employee who smokes on duty faces discipline under Chapter 2 instead of the fine.