The fresh air at the Asbury Park beach front could be even fresher this summer.
City officials met last month to discuss designating non-smoking public areas in town, starting with beaches. Mayor Ed Johnson shared this news with the public after representatives from the Monmouth Cancer Coalition (MCC) attended the March 21 council meeting to encourage the prohibition of smoking in public areas.
“We have groups that come through town to do the beach sweeps and the amount of cigarette butts they pick up every morning is just astounding,” Johnson said. “This is something that we can help to prevent.”
City officials will likely craft an umbrella ordinance designating which areas of town would be smoke-free, Johnson said. The ordinance would also permit the council to expand or contract those areas through resolution.
The city will start with a smoke-free beach, Johnson said. His only concern with such a designation is the possibility lifeguards could become preoccupied with enforcing the non-smoking rule, he said.
According to representatives from the MCC, though, it is unlikely the lifeguards will have to keep an eye out for smokers.
“It does tend to be self-enforcing, similar to dog leash laws,” said MCC’s Patricia Virga.
MCC surveyed 14 of the 19 Monmouth County towns that currently ban smoking in outdoor public places and found the police and other public officials usually do not need to become involved in enforcement of anti-smoking rules.
“It really does become that people just know it and other people will mention it to them if they don’t,” Virga said.
Councilwoman Sue Henderson expressed enthusiastic support of the plan. She would like to see more than one smoke-free beach, she said, as well as non-smoking designations in recreation areas that are popular with children.
MCC representatives came to the meeting armed with statistics on secondhand smoke and anti-smoking laws. Michael Meddis, the Monmouth County Health Department’s Health Officer, said the only costs associated with enforcing such an ordinance would be signage, which is “negligible.”
As far as public reception of such laws, “there’s every good reason to do this and there’s no good reason not to,” Virga said. Of the 14 municipalities that participated in a survey on their own anti-smoking laws, “not a one came back with a report of a problem or any negative pushback.”
She suggested prohibiting outdoor smoking in 100 percent of public areas was a good plan, as it eliminates the confusion of whether people can light up in some parts of town and not others. Long Branch currently has such an ordinance in effect.
Smoke-free laws do not have a negative effect on business, Virga said, and the surgeon general’s report in 2010 concluded there is no safe leve lof exposure to secondhand smoke.
“The right of a person to clean air takes precedence over any possible right of the smoker to smoke, which pollutes the air that other people breathe,” Virga said.
