STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

More Columns

• Guest commentary: A banking ‘Did you know?’
• Guest commentary: Trashing the future — A perspective on underground electricity
• Guest commentary: Tax rate falls and the quality work of the city continues

Share and Enjoy [?]

You’re relaxing on a Naples beach.

Fifty feet to your right is a guy smoking a cigar and a woman having a cigarette.

Fifty feet to your left are three teenagers, playing a boombox at top volume --- Notorious B.I.G., Boogie Woogie or Beethoven -- it doesn’t matter.

Who is more likely to sabotage your beach day, the smokers or the boomboxers? It’s a fair question, as Naples City Council moves toward banning smoking on the beach.

Without the smoking ban, you could call police and demand the smokers be cited for leaving tobacco detritus on the sand, if they did. And you could claim the boombox blasters were violating noise laws, if they were.

With the smoking ban, the smokers could be cited simply for lighting up. Is that the highest calling of a cop?

Another point: The state has jurisdiction on beaches from the mean high tide line toward and into the water. So smokers could just wade into the surf a bit and smoke their brains out. Or they could walk to another area of the beach not under Naples control.

Smokers: Welcome to Marco Island! Welcome to Bonita Springs! Welcome to any but the seven or so miles of beach under City of Naples control.

It’s lame to argue that outdoor smokers are harming anyone but themselves, unless they leave the dregs of their deadly habit in the sand or the water.

Cigarette butts are not biodegradable, as I understand it. They could be there forever as smelly, eyesore reminders of a dumb yet legal indulgence.

Tobacco litter is a problem for sure, but the city has had some success in the past year or so with what are affectionately called “Butt Bags.”

The bags are available at many of the city’s 43 beach access points. The smoker takes a bag with him or her to the beach, puts the dead coffin nails into the bag and returns the trash to litter containers back at the access points.

“It’s not 100 percent effective, but it has done some good,” says Naples Director of Community Services Dave Lykins. “We’ve seen a reduction of trash on the beach.”

The same bill that would ban smoking on Naples‘s jurisdiction beaches also would cover all city parks. A better case can be made there, where many areas already are non-smoking, such as around athletic fields and food facilities. And there’s already a no smoking rule near the fuel station at the City Dock, for obvious reasons.

Some citizens cry foul at the idea of a smoking ban on the beach. They say it will cause tourists to go elsewhere, especially foreigners who smoke in greater numbers than do Americans.

There’s also the “What Do We Ban Next?” crowd, who predict eventual bans against obese beachgoers in bikinis or bans against kids digging holes in the sand

for others to fall into. Silly? Sure.

Unenforceable? Maybe. But smoking at the beach might also be another law largely ignored.

One other point. The maximum penalty for smoking on the beach could be a $500 fine and 60 days in jail.

That much money would buy about 15 cartons of Marlboro Lights, but you couldn’t smoke them at the Collier County Jail anyway. It’s a no-smoking facility.

- - -

Contact Don Farmer at don@donfarmer.com