Residents of San Marcos who are concerned about smoking on city-owned grounds can breathe easy at the start of the new year, as all city-owned property, grounds, parks, facilities and buildings will go smoke-free on Jan. 1.

San Marcos City Council's Oct. 2 vote also bans smoking inside bars, restaurants, workplaces and other public indoor areas effective June 2014.

The "public places" referred to in the ordinance include banks, bars, restaurants, bingo halls, indoor music venues, convention facilities, schools, health care facilities, retail stores, theaters, malls, sports arenas, waiting rooms and workplaces.

Trey Hatt, communications specialist for the city of San Marcos, said enforcement of the laws will begin with education and eventually lead to more stringent enforcement. According to a city press release, violation of the smoking ordinance is a class C misdemeanor and carries a fine not to exceed $200 for the first offense, $500 for the second and $2,000 for subsequent violations.

"We're going to lead off with an education-first model on that," Hatt said. "Certainly in the first months and phases, it will be education first."

The ordinance includes an exception for retail tobacco and vape shops as well as designated outdoor areas of bars and restaurants.

Sharon Teal, co-owner of the retail vape shop Ahh Vapors, called the exception "an extreme victory."

"The way it was originally written, if they hadn't written the addendum, we couldn't have testers inside the building," Teal said.

Ahh Vapors and many other retail vape shops allow customers to test flavors in the store. Without the exception written into the ordinance, customers would have been forced to go outside to test their flavors.

Teal said she doesn't believe the ordinance will affect her business noticeably, but she said she wishes the city had allowed business owners to make up their own minds about smoking policies within their establishments.

"They're classifying vapers in the same classification as smokers," Teal said. "That's just not true. It's just liquid that you inhale and exhale as water vapor."

At city council's meeting on Sept. 17, Dr. Philip Huang, medical director and health authority for the Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department, urged city council to include e-cigarettes and vapor devices in the ordinance because there is not enough known about what is in the vapors.

"When you're in the shower and there's steam, that's not how vapor acts," Huang said. "There are a lot of things in [e-cigarettes] that we don't know about."