Schenectady, NY Public Conduct: Outdoor Smoking Restrictions (2026)

Article III of Chapter 192, Smoking Near City-Owned Public Buildings, was added in 2017 by Ordinance No. 2017-09. Section 192-37 defines smoking broadly to include inhaling, exhaling, burning or carrying any lighted or heated cigarette, cigar, cigarillo, little cigar, bidi, kretek or hookah product, and it expressly folds in electronic nicotine delivery systems, meaning vaping is treated the same as lighting a cigarette. Tobacco product likewise covers cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco, snuff, chewing and dipping tobacco, bidis, snus, dissolvable products and e-cigarette devices, though FDA-approved cessation products are carved out.

The operative rule in § 192-38 is a flat 50-foot buffer around any building the City owns or operates that is open to the public, inside which tobacco product use of any kind is prohibited. Section 192-39 backs up the buffer by banning ashtrays, ash cans or any other smoking waste receptacle inside an area where the article prohibits smoking, closing off the obvious workaround of setting out a place to smoke just outside a doorway. Enforcement is assigned specifically to the Schenectady Police Department under § 192-40D, and the penalty structure treats every instance of smoking or tobacco use as its own violation, each carrying a $50 fine, while other, non-smoking violations of the article, like an ashtray left in place, are charged per day the condition continues.

The article also reaches anyone who causes, permits, aids, abets or conceals a violation, so a business that lets patrons smoke against a City building's wall, or leaves out an ashtray in the buffer zone, can be cited in its own right.