Manchester, CT Public Conduct: Outdoor Smoking Restrictions (2026)

Section 205-2 of the Manchester Code of Ordinances, added October 14, 2008, is the Town's only outdoor public-place smoking ban, and it is narrow by design: it applies only to the grounds of the Mary Cheney Library, defined as the area within 30 feet of the library's main entrance. The section defines 'smoking' as lighting or carrying a lighted cigarette, cigar, pipe or similar device, so it reaches lit tobacco products rather than vaping devices or smokeless tobacco. Within that 30-foot zone, smoking is flatly prohibited, and anyone who violates the section is fined $50 for each offense.

The Code does not extend a similar ban to Town parks, sidewalks or outdoor dining patios elsewhere in Manchester; the closest related rule sits in Chapter 214, which bars smoking inside any massage room or anywhere within a licensed massage therapy establishment. Manchester's tobacco-sale provisions, which raise the purchase age and regulate flavored products, address retail sales rather than where a person may light up outdoors, so they do not expand this ban's geographic reach. Anyone smoking outdoors elsewhere in Town, including in other Town parks or on Main Street sidewalks, is not covered by Section 205-2.