Selectman Bruce Breton, a former smoker, thinks the beach and other town recreation areas should be off limits to smokers.
Butts on the beach: A smoking ban for Windham
Should Windham ban smoking on the town beach? Maybe, but not for the usual reasons.
May 18, 2007
On Monday selectmen voted, 3-2, against banning smoking on the Cobbetts Pond town beach starting June 1. They opted instead to hear public input at next week’s meeting. Good idea.
People think of smoking bans as always and only being about health. But there can be other reasons for banning smoking at a place like a public beach.
Nonsmokers who patronize a bar or restaurant that allows smoking have no right to complain. They can take their business elsewhere. But a public beach is different. Through taxes, nonsmokers pay to enjoy the beach, as do smokers.
The key issue here is not public health. At the beach, how much concentrated secondhand smoke could a nonsmoker possibly breathe? Hardly enough to pose a danger.
The issue is whether smoking at the beach is a public nuisance. The dual irritant of wind-blown smoke and littered cigarette ends could well be enough to justify a ban, or at least a segregated smoking area. It would be no different than banning loud music or firecrackers.
If the public thinks cigarette smoking has become a nuisance at the town beach, the selectmen are certainly justified in banning the activity there. But they should not try to claim it as a public health measure. It’s all about being considerate to others. If smokers using Cobbett’s Pond are not, then they’re free to enjoy the beach so long as they smoke somewhere else.
N.H. town eyes a beach smoking ban
By Jenna Russell, Globe Staff? |? May 13, 2007
WINDHAM, N.H. — On hot summer days at the edge of Cobbetts Pond, families crowd together with hardly a gap between towels. Children play on every inch of sand at this tiny town beach. And too often, say some town officials, that sand is littered with cigarette butts.
Selectmen in Windham, 30 miles north of Boston, will consider banning smoking at the beach when they meet tomorrow night. The move might seem out of step in New Hampshire, the only New England state yet to ban smoking in restaurants. But it is in synch with a growing number of towns and cities across the country, where the beach has emerged as the next frontier in the war on tobacco.
A Rhode Island legislator has proposed a smoking ban at all state-run beaches in the Ocean State, and scattered towns throughout New England have already prohibited smoking on beaches or re stricted cigarettes to designated areas. Most beaches in southern California, from Los Angeles to San Diego, have already gone smoke-free.
National advocates for smoke-free beaches predict that smoking bans on beaches will expand to cover more of the country’s coastline and lakefronts.
“Smoke-free beaches are the norm now here in southern California, and it’s only a matter of time before that spreads,” said Robert Berger , president of Santa Monica -based Healthier Solutions, a public health advocacy group. “The vast majority of people don’t smoke, and they’re saying they don’t want that when they go to experience something as peaceful, and hopefully pristine, as a beach.”
Unlike restrictions on smoking indoors, beach smoking bans are being driven by concerns about litter as well as secondhand smoke. Cigarettes consistently rank as the largest source of debris in global beach clean-ups organized by the non profit Ocean Conservancy, based in Washington, D.C.
In Massachusetts in 2005, cigarettes accounted for 37 percent of coastal litter, according to the conservancy; the next largest source, food wrappers, made up 12 percent of debris. Opponents of cigarette smoking on beaches say discarded butts contain toxins that can harm children and animals.
In Windham, the compactness of the beach makes cigarette smoke more bothersome than it might be elsewhere, said Cheryl Haas , the town’s recreation director. Litter has also been a problem at the beach, which is popular with families for its placid waters; children step on the butts, she said, and use them in sand castles.
Many Windham residents have embraced the idea of a beach smoking ban, said Haas. But elsewhere, defenders of smokers’ rights rail against the expansion of smoking restrictions to outdoor spaces.
“When they start banning smoking outdoors, you know it’s not about health,” said Darlene Brennan , a leader of the regional group Maine Smokers Rights. “It’s about control, and another way to restrict a legal product.”
Brennan questioned the assertion that cigarette butts are a serious problem on beaches.
“Cigarettes are so small, unless you dump a whole ashtray on the beach, who’s going to see them?” said Brennan. “I’ve never seen cigarette litter on the beach that was even worth mentioning.”
Some towns have rejected such bans. Efforts to enact Florida’s first beach smoking ban failed last year when a slight majority of Cocoa Beach voters said no to such a plan for their barrier island. Opponents had warned residents that surfing and picnics could be outlawed next, said the city’s mayor, Skip Beeler , who proposed the ban after visiting clean, smokeless California beaches.
“People just see beaches as an ashtray,” he said. “The smokers all deny it’s them, but you go to the beach and see people making rings [of butts] around their chairs.”
Hawaii has two smokeless beaches, but attempts to enact a statewide beach smoking ban have been unsuccessful, according to the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Hawaii.
In Massachusetts, where smoking has been banned in all workplaces, including restaurants, since 2004, smoking bans on beaches have been slow to take off since the town of Sharon blazed a trail a dozen years ago. When voters banned smoking at playgrounds and beaches in 1995, the town south of Boston became one of the first in the country to do so. It remains one of just a handful of Massachusetts towns that prohibit beach smoking, according to Tobacco Free Mass, a health advocacy group.
Elsewhere in New England, smoking is banned at beaches in Conway, N.H., Winthrop and Oxford, Maine, Warren, R.I., and Weston, Vt., state and local health officials said. Smokers must stay in designated areas at beaches in Meredith, N.H., Barre, Vt., and Barrington, R.I.
Enforcement of the rule has been difficult, said Bill Hedlund , superintendent of parks and recreation in Braintree. Police have more pressing concerns, and lifeguards are not asked to assume the responsibility. “We tell them, you’re not police officers,” he said. “If you see someone smoking and it’s not an issue for anyone else, it’s not an issue for you.”
A similar rule against smoking on Braintree’s public golf course was modified after golfers complained, to allow smoking 20 feet away from the nearest non smoker, Hedlund said.
Jenna Russell can be reached at jrussell@globe.com.
May 12, 2007
Elected officials of Windham, New Hampshire,
Elected officials of Windham, New Hampshire,
You guys may have saved the world from Nazi tyranny but you may not be able to smoke anywhere in the ‘WIDE OPEN SPACES’ of the parks and beaches of Windham, New Hampshire!
I am not a smoker myself and do not really consider myself pro-smoking but this anti-smoking craze has gotten out of control. The issue of inside secondhand smoke is still controversial, but outside it is not even an issue. Outside bans are for ‘social engineers’ in kooky states like California and New York. There is absolutely ZERO evidence that cigarette smoke outside has ever hurt anyone. You will note if you follow this link that even the notable anti-smoking activist Dr. Michael Siegel does not believe that outside bans are necessary.
Read Santa Cruz
Read Belmont
Read more from Michael Siegel
Read Santa Cruz
Read Belmont
Read more from Michael Siegel
As a historian, I have considered smoking bans from a historical perspective too. If you read Iain Gately’s Tobacco: A Cultural History of How an Exotic Plant Seduced Civilization you will note that smoking bans have come and gone for hundreds of years. They just don’t last very well and are widely flouted. If you read Cassandra Tate’s Cigarette Wars: Triumph of the Little White Slaver you will discover that during the Progressive era the US had an anti-cigarette movement which included bans on cigarette sales. The movement failed miserably, and smoking rates climbed higher than before. Look, we’ve already been down this road before. I don’t want to see history repeat itself.
Thanks,
Dr. Jeremy Richards, Ph.D.
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Dr. Jeremy Richards, Ph.D.
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Town Considering Outdoor Smoking Ban
5/7/07
WINDHAM, N.H. — Town officials in Windham are looking into banning smoking at the town beach.
Recreation Director Cheryl Hass initially suggested setting up a separate area for smokers, but some selectmen say they’d rather ban smoking at the entire beach.
Selectman Bruce Breton, a former smoker, thinks the beach and other town recreation areas should be off limits to smokers.
A public hearing will be held next Monday. At that time, town officials could vote on the ban.
Windham may snuff smoking at town beach
5/7/07
By Gordon Fraser , Staff writer? Eagle-Tribune
By Gordon Fraser , Staff writer? Eagle-Tribune
WINDHAM – When Recreation Director Cheryl Hass suggested setting up a separate area for smokers at the town beach, she might have gotten more than she bargained for.
“I just think the recreation areas, with the kids in the area, should be (entirely) nonsmoking,” said Selectman Bruce Breton.
A former smoker himself, Breton thinks the beach – along with the town’s other recreation areas – should ban smoking all together.
And Selectmen Vice Chairman Dennis Senibaldi agrees, at least when it comes to the beach.
“What are we going to say? Smoke around the kids?” Senibaldi asked.
Senibaldi said he would consider clearly defined smoking areas at ballfields and skate parks, but doesn’t want smokers sitting in the bleachers or puffing away near children.
Hass called on selectmen to craft a smoking policy in advance of the beach’s opening June 9. Currently, Windham prohibits smoking in town facilities except in designated areas.
To address the potential ban of smoking at the beach, selectmen will hold a public hearing May 14.
Although Hass initially asked selectmen to set up designated smoking areas, she said she’d be comfortable with a total ban.
“The beach is small and a lot of people smoke, and there (are) kids running around,” she said.
She also worries about “people sitting on their chairs with their arms hanging out with cigarettes” as children run past.
In a state very close to placing a ban on cigarette smoke in restaurants – a recent ban passed the state Senate and is pending in the House – very few have come to the defense of cigarette smokers. The smoking ban passed the Senate 17-7.
Even Sen. Bob Letourneau, R-Derry, who voted against the restaurant smoking ban, said he doesn’t have a problem with Windham’s choice.
“My opposition was basically to the government interfering with private (industry),” he said, adding that Windham has every right to regulate its own property.
Still, he said, he wouldn’t recommend selectmen make the decision without calling for the people to vote at Town Meeting.
“Personally, if I was on the Board of Selectmen, I would put it to a vote of the people,” he said.
That doesn’t seem likely, though.
“It was just nasty, and there’s no need for it. There’s 90 percent kids down there,” said Senibaldi of smoking at the town beach.
Both he and Breton think that the ban will pass, at least on the beach.
For Hass’ part, she just hopes to get a decision on the beach before it opens for the season.
“My goal for the 14th is just to have a decision on the town beach,” she said.
