La Mesa, CA Public Conduct: Outdoor Smoking Restrictions (2026)

Adopted by Ordinance 2020-2878 in January 2020, Chapter 7.27 defines a public place broadly under Section 7.27.020 to include any place, publicly or privately owned, open to the general public regardless of fee or age requirement, expressly naming city streets and sidewalks, outdoor worksites, hotel rooms, bars, eating establishments, recreational areas, playgrounds and parks. Section 7.27.035 then bars smoking, including vaping, in any public place, in common areas of multi-unit housing open to the public, and in unenclosed workplaces, and it makes it unlawful for an owner, operator or manager to knowingly allow smoking there.

Four narrow exceptions survive: up to twenty percent of a hotel or motel's guest rooms, retail tobacco shops, sealed and ventilated private smokers' lounges including hookah bars, and any restaurant or bar that had continuously run an outdoor smoking or dining area for adults twenty-one and over for at least sixty days before the ordinance, so long as it isn't discontinued for ninety consecutive days and doesn't encroach on city property. Section 7.27.040 requires an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch 'No Smoking or Vaping' sign posted in the outside window of every covered building. Enclosed workplaces remain separately covered by state law under Section 7.27.030, which the city is authorized to enforce under California Labor Code Section 6404.5.