Outdoor smoking bans: Thanks, we’ll keep ‘em

So a couple of researchers who breathe the crystalline air of New York City are saying that our longstanding outdoor smoking bans may not be legit, that the science may not be not sound.

In the journal Health Affairs, the authors say health concerns about second-hand smoke in parks and on beaches are “far from definitive and in some cases weak.”

Let me clear my throat here:

Big. Deal.

California has led the way in banning smoking from many parks and beaches. Cities in all 50 states have followed suit.

Was it because of health concerns? Sure, in part. But I think the bans were mostly about the fact that it is just plain gross to turn a public beach into a private ashtray, and it’s also dangerous to light up coffin nails in bone-dry public parks.

Most of the people lolling at the beach and picnicking in the parks probably aren’t thinking so much about smoking as a vector for vile health problems as the fact that it’s vile, period.

And you don’t have to inhale the smoke for smoking to make you sick. Cigarette butts smell horrible. Environmental groups say the stuff that poisons the lungs of smokers winds up poisoning the environment when smokers flick their cruddy remnants away. They don’t completely disintegrate and disappear. The junk in that cigarette butt can filter into the ground, the water, the food chains on land and sea. Your kids pick them up. Your dog licks them.

The Surfrider Foundation’s PSA says flat out that the only kind of butts on the beach should be the living, breathing kind.

On some beaches, cigarette butts can constitute the single biggest class of litter. The anti-cigarette website www.cigarettelitter.org says Americans throw out 176 million pounds of cigarette butts a year -- not all of it on beaches. Oh no. Some are thrown out of cars by idiots who would rather mess up the public outdoors than their private four-wheeled smoking dens. Sometimes I’m tempted to follow one of them home and dump an ashtray’s contents on his front lawn.

The Columbia University researchers say policymakers justify park and beach smoking bans with arguments about second-hand smoke, cigarette butt pollution and setting a bad example for kids. But the real motivation, they conclude, is to “denormalize” smoking.

Does that mean signaling that smoking is not good for kids or adults, just like it says on the tobacco labels? Would you rather we just handed them a pack of Luckys and said, “Your call, kid”?

Of course we’re trying to “denormalize” smoking, as we’ve tried to “denormalize” driving without a seat belt and other behaviors that not only can kill the person in question but make life miserable for the rest of us.

The researchers have a point when they say that basing policy on weak science “is hazardous for public health policymakers, for whom public trust is essential.”

Of course policymakers should have the public’s trust. If the researchers are right about the science in this case, I’m inviting policymakers here and now to stand up and say, again, “We don’t want smoking at beaches and in parks. It’s disgusting. Even if the smoke won’t kill you, it doesn’t make you feel better. All that rich nicotine and chemical goodness gums up the sand, the water and the soil. You might as well just use the ocean or a playground as a bathroom.”

There. At least we’ve been able to clear that bit of air.

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