Smoking On Beaches: IL Chicago Beach and Park Ban

By Jonathan On Jul 5, 2017

Chicago Beach and Park Ban Update

Even the Cops at Riot Fest Think the Smoking Ban Is ‘Stupid’
Surprise: No one at Riot Fest cares much for the recently passed ban on smoking in public parks.
9/6/2014
By Matt Pollock
After the Chicago Park District voted to ban smoking in Chicago’s 580 public parks on Wednesday, the park district superintendent took only a few hours to reassure Riot Fest attendees that the ban wouldn’t really apply to them.
“People at Riot Fest this weekend, they don’t need to worry about…a man tapping on their shoulder and saying, ‘You’re under arrest,’” said Park District Superintendent Mike Kelly. “That’s not the point of this.”
The three-day Humboldt Park festival kicked off yesterday, and as it was now supposedly the last festival that would be lax on ticketing smokers, I went to see what people thought of the ban. Short answer: it’s dumb. Even the cops think so.
“They banned it in the parks? Sounds pretty stupid,” said one cop, who asked to remain anonymous. “Isn’t the park open? You can’t smoke anywhere now.” When asked whether he would enforce the ban eventually, he said, “The only way I’d enforce it was if they were smoking weed. Because, you know, you have to set an example for the kids.”
A group of three security guards manning the fence at California and Division had not only not been briefed on the rule—they didn’t know it had even passed. “You can’t smoke in the park now?” one asked. “Is that because of the butts or something? I don’t smoke, but that’s bullshit. You’re outside. I mean, you shouldn’t be smoking in the kids part of the park, on the playground.”
Many Riot Fest attendees, both smokers and non, were equally mystified. I found Edgewater resident Robert Connaghan smoking outside the main gate and asked him his thoughts on the ban. “It’s a terrible idea, and severely constricting,” the 30-year-old said. “What’s the point of banning it outside? I don’t understand what the issue is. That was the point of banning it in restaurants. Where are we supposed to smoke now? If you’re gonna make it illegal, make it illegal. The voters didn’t even get a say.”
The ban applies to e-cigarettes and vaporizors as well, which upset Michelle B., 32, of Uptown. “I’ve been smoking the e-cigarette for a year. It’s the only thing that helped me quit smoking—I’ve tried everything, this is the only thing that worked. I haven’t had a cigarette in a year, and I have my nicotine concentration down to the lowest it can go. But now with the ban…I don’t understand. I would never smoke an e-cigarette in a five star restaurant, but it’s water vapor. Are we going to ban fog machines next?”
Riot Fest staff member Eddie Hernandez, 50 and a nonsmoker, said, “There should be no human being that can own the air. The water and the air belong to the people. Whether you smoke or not, that’s nobody’s business.”
And Stephanie, a 24-year-old Ukrainian Village resident, singled out one of the most common responses I heard: “I highly doubt the Chicago Police Department has time to worry about me smoking in a park.”

Even more places for smokers to butt out
Park District bans smoking near playgrounds, on public beaches
October 17, 2007?
The Chicago Park District Board voted to ban smoking at beaches and outdoor playgrounds during a meeting this afternoon. Further details to come.

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Mayor Daley cityclerk@cityofchicago.org is the Chicago elected official who appoints the Chicago Park District’s seven member board.? He is the person to contact in objection to this new Park/Beach ban, along with Timothy J. Mitchell http://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/contact.home.cfm .?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Park_District
The Chicago Park District is the oldest and (financially) largest park district in the nation, with a $385 million annual budget. The park district also has the excellent reputation of spending the most per capita on its parks, even more than Boston in terms of park expenses per capita. It is an independent taxing authority as defined by Illinois State Statute and is considered a separate (or “sister”) agency of the city of Chicago. The CEO of the Park District is appointed by the Mayor of Chicago.
The agency was long considered a dumping ground for political appointees; most famously, it was run by Ed Kelly, one of the “Eddies” who frustrated Mayor Harold Washington in the 1980s. The size and personnel of the park district was dramatically pared down during the reform administration of Mayor Richard M. Daley-appointed CEO Forrest Claypool in the mid-1990s. Until 1983 it was District policy to underfund parks in minority neighborhoods[1].
Since the 2004, the district has been run by Tim Mitchell. During his tenure, the park district has taken steps to return programming to the neighborhoods and created a lakefront concert venue on Northerly Island (formerly Meigs Field).
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http://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/departments.home.cfm
Board of Commissioners
The Mayor of the City of Chicago appoints the Chicago Park District’s seven-member board. The Board is the governing body of the Chicago Park District. The Board has three standing committees under which business is done: Administration, Programs and Recreation, and Capital Improvements. The Office of the Secretary serves as the coordinating staff to the Board.
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Subject: No more butts at the beach? – Chicago, IL

October 16, 2007
Chicago Sun Times
Letter to the Editor
?
RE:? No more butts at the beach?? http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/605110,101607beaches.article

Hmmmm… By examining the statistics provided in this news story for garbage collected along the Lake Michigan beaches, that’s less than 1000 cigarette butts per mile…and, in most places, ashtray urns have been removed.? Yet, almost 8000 pounds of garbage was collected…and there are outdoor garbage receptacles conveniently located everywhere.? Styrofoam cups, paper and aluminum cans don’t weigh much.?
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So, who are the offenders that need monitoring….smokers or the littering public?? Chicago already has a comprehensive littering law which does not appear to be enforced.? This new proposed smoking ban couldn’t be based on more discrimination against smokers and unnecessary additional persecution, could it??
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“In 2003, volunteers cleaned up 7,983 pounds of trash — and more than 32,000 cigarette butts — spanning 34 miles along the lakefront.”
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If the Chicago Park District plans to outlaw smoking on public Chicago beaches and in their parks, then it’s time to outlaw food and beverages in those same areas too, or turn them into private access areas.? Believing in SHS health dangers outdoors is like believing in the Tooth Fairy. Cigarettes are still legal and highly taxed items.
?
?
Garnet Dawn
Illinois Smokers Rights – http://www.illinoissmokersrights.com
The Smoker’s Club, Inc. – Midwest Regional Director
The United Pro Choice Smokers Rights Newsletter – http://www.smokersclubinc.com
mailto:garnetdawn@comcast.net – Respect Freedom of Choice!
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No more butts at the beach?
City plan would outlaw smoking at public parks, beaches
October 16, 2007
BY ANDREW HERRMANN Staff Reporter
Chicago would ban smoking on beaches and at playgrounds under a measure proposed today by the Chicago Park District.
The park district board is likely to approve the plan Wednesday.
Not all areas in city parks would be smoke-free, however, a parks spokeswoman said today.
Environmentalists have pushed for a ban for years, saying that during annual cleanup days they were able to pick up 10,000 cigarette butts an hour on Chicago beaches.
In 2006, the City Council’s Committee on Parks and Recreation heard testimony about the problem, including claims that cigarette butts and smoking-related debris make up half the trash on Chicago beaches, contaminating sand and water. They heard about how partly extinguished cigarettes and matches have caused fires.
But at the time, Mayor Daley dismissed the idea, raising questions about enforcement. He also suggested in June of 2006 that there was a danger of government intrusion into people’s lives.
“If you want government to pass every law that is necessary for you, after a while, you’re going to have a list of things you cannot do. You can’t even come out of your house eventually. You cannot eat, the way the City Council is going. How far should government become involved in peoples’ lives?” Daley said at the time.
Today, parks spokeswoman Jessica Maxey-Faulkner said enforcement would be user-driven. People angry about smokers could call the police, who would issue a ticket, said Maxey-Faulkner.
“This gives parents a right to say something” if someone is smoking in a playground, Maxey-Faulkner said.
“Our main goal is to protect children,’’ she said.
Some areas would not be covered “at this time,” such as “large passive areas” in parks away from areas where children play, she said. One example might be open areas in Grant Park.
Parks Supt. Timothy Mitchell is scheduled to be joined by Ald. Danny Solis (25th) and Alliance of the Great Lakes director Cameron Davis at Margate Park, 4921 N. Marine, this morning to officially announce the plan.

Becoming one with beach is a trashy exercise

September 13, 2006

People are pigs.

This is a logical conclusion for a Chicago beachcomber, but Jennifer Roche had a kinder view of us two-legged beasts as she roamed the sands on Tuesday, stooping to toss her finds into a white plastic garbage bag.

Cigarette butts. A Corona beer cap. Cigarette butts. Duct tape. Cigarette butts, cigarette butts, enough cigarette butts to make even a skeptic think the recent proposal to ban smoking on the city’s beaches might not be so crazy after all.

“I like to think that once people get conscious about it they’ll do the right thing,” said Roche, plunging a hand into the sand.

If only we understood that a cigarette butt bleeds chemicals, that an aluminum can could survive for 200 years, that a glass bottle could live almost as long as God. Maybe then we wouldn’t be such slobs.

Roche pinched a gray plastic thingamajig through her plastic glove. “What do you think this is?”

Roche became a beach trash activist on a September day three years ago. While vacationing with her husband and two kids in Maine, she wandered down to the ocean.

“And out of the corner of my eye,” she said, “I saw a Sanyo computer monitor. It was tucked in the cove, bobbing near the shore, upright. The screen was looking at me.”

She came home to Chicago thinking that if she couldn’t stop war in Iraq, at least she could help save life in the lake she loved.

Roche is 40, tall, and doesn’t mind getting her short blond hair wet in a drizzle. This year she’s co-captain of Saturday’s North Avenue Beach cleanup, part of an annual citywide volunteer event coordinated by the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

On Tuesday, as she escorted me on a preview of the trash pickup, a pewter sky hung over the gray-green water. Summer had shipped south. The freshly raked brown sand looked clean and empty, and the only footprints belonged to birds.

But the beach, like an impressionist painting, was one thing from afar. Up close, it was a work of dizzying detail: Junk peeked through every other inch of ground.

A straw. A cup. A fork, a spoon, a shoelace.

“A bandage, eww, ” she said, reaching into one of the strange little nests of stuff clustered around the white volleyball poles.

She shook sand off a wad of gauze. “That’s why you’re glad you’ve got the gloves.”

The strangest thing Roche has seen in her beach collecting is a dead deer, across the lake in Michigan. The only thing she has kept is a little green Army soldier.

“My cleanup mascot,” she said.

Nothing would surprise her. Here’s her partial tally of things collected by the North Avenue team at last year’s cleanup:

93 bags. 94 balloons. 798 food wrappers. 7 shotgun shells. 259 mysterious strapping bands. 711 caps and lids. 1 car antenna. 12 condoms. 3 tampons. 21 hair accessories. 1 sign post.

4,466 cigarette butts.

And that’s just one Chicago beach in three hours.

“Every piece of litter has a person’s face behind it,” says the Ocean Conservancy’s Pocket Guide to Marine Debris, which Roche had brought along.

As she recorded each piece of trash on the form used by all cleanup volunteers, I tried to imagine faces.

The Gatorade bottle. Which thirsty volleyball player? The popped green balloon. Whose birthday party? The purple bubble blower. Whose child?

And why did none of them pick up what they dropped?

However the trash got there, Roche says, picking it up is more than an exercise in beautification.

“It connects you to the beach,” she said.

It connects you in a way that just going to the beach doesn’t. It teaches you how big even a small beach is. How one piece of trash multiplied by thousands adds up to tons. It teaches you to care.

For more information on Saturday’s beach cleanup in and around Chicago, go to www.greatlakes.org/
Read

Daley balks at bid to ban smoking at beaches

June 30, 2006
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter

Mayor Daley has two words for environmentalists determined to ban smoking at Chicago beaches: Butt out.

“Smoking is bad for you. The only problem is, who’s going to take responsibility [for enforcement]. Lifeguards aren’t going to be chasing people down for smoking . . . and drinking on a beach,” Daley said.

Mayor rips ‘government intrusion’

“We hope people self-enforce when they go to the beach. They should be understanding [of] the environment, the beach, the water . . . People have to start taking responsibility. If you want government to pass every law that is necessary for you, after a while, you’re going to have a list of things you cannot do. You can’t even come out of your house eventually. You cannot eat, the way the City Council is going. How far should government become involved in peoples’ lives?”

The mayor was referring to City Council decisions to ban smoking in restaurants and bars and to outlaw foie gras as well as to a proposal to prohibit restaurants from using oils containing artificial trans fats in food preparation.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported earlier this week that environmentalists were pushing for a beach smoking ban after picking up 10,000 cigarette butts an hour during a beach cleanup last fall.

On Thursday, the City Council’s Committee on Parks and Recreation heard testimony about the problem, including claims that cigarette butts and smoking-related debris make up half the trash on Chicago beaches, contaminating sand and water. They heard about how partly extinguished cigarettes and matches have caused fires.

Committee Chairman Mary Ann Smith (48th) came away convinced that a beach smoking ban is needed. Never mind that Daley views it as yet another Big Brother intrusion and claims there’s no way to enforce the ban.

Kids ‘running through ashtray’

“We have a responsibility to take good care of these wonderful resources — the open lakefront and the God-given gift of fresh water. Beaches are one of the few places children can run around without being hit by a car. We don’t want them running through an ashtray,” Smith said.

She noted that smoking is banned on CTA L platforms and you don’t need a police officer there to enforce it. If somebody’s smoking, another passenger can say, “It’s against the law. Put it out.”

“We can create an expectation and look toward self-policing. If you don’t set expectations for behavior, you’re sanctioning it. In a family environment, smoking is not a great idea. We’re sanctioning it by not challenging it,” she said.

Smith plans to hold a public hearing along the lakefront during National Beach Cleanup in September so aldermen can see the problem that needs to be cleaned up.

City considers smoking ban at beaches

June 29, 2006
By Evelyn Holmes

A Chicago City Council Committee is considering an ordinance that would ban smoking on all city beaches.

The informational meeting was for committee members to discuss the possible smoking ban on beaches and gain momentum for the legislation, which could go before the entire council in the fall.

One environmental group said volunteers remove about 10,000 cigarette butts from Illinois lakefront each year. Supporters believe smoking at the beach causes health and environmental hazards.

“Those are items that can restrict fish and wildlife. There are things that kids can put in their mouths and choke on when they are at the beach. They are things that shouldn’t be there because they don’t biodegrade. They don’t break down,” said Cameron Davis, Alliance for the Great Lakes.

“Is the beach an ashtray? Are we teaching children what we need to see in a recreation area like a beach? Smoking is not good for anybody. It is not good for the taxpayers that spend million of dollars that we spend cleaning this garbage off the beach,” said Ald. Mary Ann Smith, 48th Ward.

Critics of the smoking ban question enforcement procedures. Most people seemed to support the idea.

“I am an ex-smoker, so I am totally for it to be banned on the beach,” said Marti Davis, beachgoer.

“I don’t want to be subject to that. Once we get in our own minds to respect each other’s place, we don’t have to have people legislate everything we do,” said Gina Darby, beachgoer.

“Certainly keeping the beaches clean is our priority as well, so we share that with them. But I think it’s going to take a little bit more research for us just to see how we can enforce it– if we can at all. It’s not something we want lifeguards to be doing,” said Megan McDonald-Paulson, Chicago Park District.

If the ban moves forward, the city council committee will draft some sort of legislation that will then be presented and voted on by the full council.

City considers smoking ban at beaches

June 29, 2006
Dan Ponce

The city may soon snuff out cigarettes along Chicago’s lakefront. A Chicago City Council Committee is considering an ordinance that would ban smoking on all city beaches.

The informational meeting was for committee members to discuss the possible smoking ban on beaches and gain momentum for the legislation, which could go before the entire council in the fall.

One environmental group said volunteers remove about 30,000 cigarette butts from Illinois lakefront each year. Supporters believe smoking at the beach causes health and environmental hazards.

Environmentalists from Alliance for the Great Lakes presented their case to the Chicago City Council’s Parks and Recreation Committee on Thursday. The city committee is chaired by Mary Ann Smith, 48th Ward.

“That could save us many millions of dollars. If people would really live by that and would live by that,” said Ald. Mary Ann Smith, 48th Ward. “Is the beach an ashtray? Are we teaching children what we need to see in a recreation area like a beach? Smoking is not good for anybody. It is not good for the taxpayers that spend million of dollars that we spend cleaning this garbage off the beach.”

Critics of the smoking ban question enforcement procedures. Beach-goers were split on the subject.

“I am an ex-smoker, so I am totally for it to be banned on the beach,” said Marti Davis, beachgoer.

“I don’t want to be subject to that. Once we get in our own minds to respect each other’s place, we don’t have to have people legislate everything we do,” said Gina Darby, beachgoer.

A main concern for the Chicago Parks District is enforcement.

“We can only do so much. And like I said, we work very hard to keep the litter off the parks and off the beaches. But it is a true team effort. And we need everybody in the city of Chicago to help us with that,” said Megan McDonald-Paulson, Chicago Park District.

If the ban moves forward, the city council committee will draft some sort of legislation that will then be presented and voted on by the full council.

Environmentalists: Ban smoking on Chicago’s beaches

June 29, 2006
Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah

An environmental group is trying to build momentum for a smoking ban on Chicago’s beaches, but Mayor Richard Daley on Thursday appeared to draw a line in the sand at the proposed regulation.

The Alliance for the Great Lakes, formerly the Lake Michigan Federation, has been trying for three years to get a smoking ban on beaches. On Thursday, the alliance spoke before the City Council Committee on Parks and Recreation.

Alliance President Cameron Davis said the group’s annual beach cleanup in September gathers 30,000 cigarette butts, about 52 percent of all litter.

“It’s problematic for children, fish and wildlife,” Davis said. “And the problem is not going away. We can’t keep treating [beaches] as ash trays.”

Carrie Gallagher of the national litter awareness group Keep America Beautiful said cigarette filters not only trap toxins, they remain for years in the stomachs of seagulls, fish and pets that ingest them.

Chicago Ald. Mary Ann Smith (48th), who hopes eventually to write legislation banning smoking on beaches, said the city spends millions keeping beaches clean and she receives many complaints from parents whose children have blisters from still-burning cigarettes. She believes the ban should carry warnings and penalties.

But Daley said Thursday he would not support a ban.

“Smoking is bad for you,” he said. “The only problem—who is going to take the responsibility? Our lifeguards are not going to be chasing people down.”

The Chicago Park District, which runs large cleaning machines through the sand every day, also does not want lifeguards doing the enforcing.

“Their No. 1 priority is safety of swimmers,” said parks spokeswoman Jessica Maxey-Faulkner.

The mayor also said the proposed smoking ban was another example of over-regulation. The City Council recently barred the sale of foie gras and is considering a proposal that would prohibit restaurants from using unhealthy trans fat oils.

The Alliance for the Great Lakes said a smoking ban on beaches would encourage people to self-police. Davis pointed to a smoking ban on CTA platforms, which he said prompts commuters to tell smokers to put out cigarettes. Similarly, dog owners are vigilant about other dog owners cleaning up after their pooches, he said.

If Chicago were to pass that legislation, it would join communities in California that ban smoking on beaches.

As people soaked up the sun at Ohio Street Beach, some weighed in on the smoking ban proposal.

“I think they’re nuts,” said Laura Birch, who said she throws out her cigarettes when she leaves the beach. “Don’t they have better things to worry about?”

Adam Cole, 27, of Bucktown, said smoking should be banned in all public places, beaches included.

Ald. Smith hopes to work something out with the mayor and park officials.

“Ultimately, we’re not talking about a big enforcement frenzy,” she said. “I think we’ll come up with something the public will support.”

Tribune staff reporter Gary Washburn contributed to this story.