Fort Collins, CO Public Conduct: Outdoor Smoking Restrictions (2026)

Article III of Chapter 12 layers several outdoor smoking bans on top of each other. Section 12-59 prohibits smoking in all public places in the City, a term that specifically includes every outdoor serving area of a restaurant or bar, plus bus benches, shelters and transit centers. 5 goes further and bans smoking on all City-owned property, including parks, trails, open spaces and natural areas, with a narrow exception for someone smoking entirely inside a privately owned vehicle. 5 adds a geographic overlay, the Downtown Smoke-Free Zone, a roughly eight-block area bounded by Mason, Olive, Remington, Oak, Mathews, Mountain, Jefferson and Maple Streets, where smoking is banned outright except inside a private residence, inside an enclosed private vehicle, or inside a licensed retail tobacco business.

5 separately bans smoking at all special events. On top of every one of these bans, Section 12-61 creates a 20-foot smoke-free buffer: no one may smoke within 20 feet of any entrance, passageway, operable window or ventilation system of a smoke-free establishment, or within 20 feet of the boundary of any outdoor area that must be smoke-free, unless they are only passing through without stopping. The definitions in Section 12-56 make clear these bans reach vaping as much as combustion, covering any electronic smoking device along with tobacco, marijuana, hemp, kratom, Delta-8 and synthetic marijuana products packaged or sold for smoking or vaping.