Despite the well-known risks, rates of smoking have remained stubbornly high in Missouri – about 25 percent of adults, compared with 18 percent nationally. In Kansas City public housing, the problem is even worse, with smokers comprising 40 percent of all tenants. That high rate is especially disturbing to health advocates because of the high numbers of vulnerable people, particularly children, the disabled and elderly, who live in public housing. A new policy aims to do away with smoking in city-owned housing, but many residents are not pleased. On a breezy Friday afternoon at Guinotte Manor, a public housing subdivision northeast of downtown, Kerrie Terry lights a cigarette and fumes over the changes coming to her building. “It’s BS,” she says. “It’s against our legal rights as a U.S. citizen.” After a year and a half of planning and asking for comments, the Housing Authority of Kansas City, Mo., made it official earlier this month: a smoking ban – both inside and outside Housing Authority properties - will go into effect July 1, affecting more than 5,000 people living in about 1,750 apartments and houses. People in the Housing Choice Voucher Program, or what used to be called Section 8 Housing, won’t be affected. Under that program, residents receive vouchers to live in privately-owned buildings. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development first encouraged local housing authorities to ban smoking in 2009. Today, more than 600, or 20 percent, of housing authorities in the United States have done so, according to Jim Bergman, director of the Smoke-Free Environments Law…...