De Pere, WI Public Conduct: Outdoor Smoking Restrictions (2026)

Section 8-3 is De Pere's comprehensive smoking and vapor product ordinance, and most of it addresses enclosed places, but two provisions reach outdoor locations directly. Subsection (a)(2)b prohibits smoking at two specific outdoor settings: anywhere on the premises of a childcare center while children receiving childcare services are present, and any spot 25 feet or less from a residence hall or dormitory owned or operated by a college or university. Subsection (a)(2)c goes further and bans smoking outright, indoors or out, in a sports arena, a bus shelter, or a public conveyance, without any distance qualifier.

The ordinance defines smoking broadly in subsection (a)(1) to include a lighted cigar, cigarette or pipe, other lighted smoking equipment, and any use of a vapor product, so the outdoor bans reach vaping as well as combustible tobacco. A person in charge of a covered location must post signage, refuse service to someone smoking in violation, and ask a violator to leave before calling law enforcement under subsection (a)(3); a person in charge who fails those steps faces a separate $100.00 forfeiture, capped at $100.00 total per day regardless of how many such lapses occur.

Enforcement of the smoking prohibition itself runs through subsection (a)(7): any individual who smokes in a place barred by subsection (a)(2), including the outdoor locations, is subject to a forfeiture of not less than $100.00 nor more than $250.00 for each violation.