Get your butts off Walden Galleria property

blog by S.J. Velasquez • May 31, 2012 @ 8:56am

Starting today, don’t light up a cigarette anywhere on Walden Galleria property—not even in the privacy of your own car, if your car’s parked on mall property.

All of Syracuse-based Pyramid Management Group‘s malls are tobacco-free as of today, Rochester’s News10 reports. So, no cigarettes, pipes, chewing tobacco or electronic cigarettes anywhere on mall property, whether it be a sidewalk or construction zone seemingly miles from a mall entrance.

“I think it exemplifies how social norms have really changed. Ten to 15 years ago really this would be a radical idea. And today, it’s the norm,” Dr. Andrew Hyland of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute told WIVB in an interview. “As people understand more and more of the dangers of secondhand smoke, more places are beginning to wonder about running through the gauntlet of smoke into the entrances and also what kind of role modeling it has for kids and for young people.”

Anyone caught smoking at the participating malls will be asked to dispose of the tobacco product, according to Massachusetts’ News 22.

Mall to implement tobacco-free policy: wivb.com

Photo courtesy of Flickr / Fried Dough.

TAGGED: cigarettes, no smoking, pipes, shopping, tobacco, walden galleria