Albany County, NY Public Conduct: Outdoor Smoking Restrictions (2026)

Local Law No. 2-2017, adopted as Article III of Code Chapter 242, responds to Legislature findings that secondhand smoke kills roughly 41,000 people a year and that e-cigarette aerosol carries its own load of nicotine, ultrafine particles, flavoring chemicals and heavy metals. Section 242-13 defines 'electronic aerosol delivery system' to include any device producing an inhalable aerosol along with its components and liquids, and defines 'smoking' as inhaling, exhaling, burning or carrying any lighted or heated tobacco or plant product. Section 242-14 then imposes the operative ban: smoking, tobacco product use and electronic aerosol delivery system use 'shall be prohibited within all County-owned parks and outdoor recreation areas,' with 'County-owned' expressly defined to mean parks or recreation areas owned and operated by the County of Albany itself, not municipal parks run by the City of Albany, Cohoes, Watervliet, or the County's towns and villages.

The Commissioner of the Department of Health must post conspicuous signage under § 242-15 warning of the prohibition and the associated fines. Penalties escalate under § 242-16: $50 for a first violation, and not less than $200 nor more than $500 for each subsequent violation, and the law goes further than most local smoking rules by empowering 'all law enforcement agencies having jurisdiction,' not just Health Department staff, to issue citations. Section 242-17 builds in a reverse-preemption trigger that voids the article automatically if the state or federal government later adopts substantially similar restrictions, and § 242-18 set the effective date thirty days after filing with the Secretary of State in 2017.