San Clemente Panel Kicks Sand on Smoking Ban

A proposed smoking ban on San Clemente’s city beach and pier will go to the City Council without the blessing of the parks and recreation commission.

The commission voted 4 to 3 Tuesday not to recommend that the city ban beach smoking.

Anti-smoking advocates argued that secondhand smoke is unhealthful to beachgoers and cigarette butts harm marine life. They had made similar arguments in Solana Beach -- which in October became the first West Coast city to ban smoking on the beach.

But most commissioners said secondhand smoke is diminished in an open-air environment and that banning smoking from such a public venue would infringe on civil liberties.

“The health concerns of secondhand smoke are severely diminished when you’re dealing in an atmosphere out on the coast,” said Steven Swartz, chairman of the commission. “San Clemente should not bend civil rights in response to outside interest groups.”

Instead, commissioners spent most of the two-hour meeting discussing litter. They voted to recommend placing more receptacles on the beach and posting signs reminding people to properly dispose of their cigarettes.

“I think we’re looking at the wrong problem,” commissioner Ann Dickson said. “I would suggest we focus on the litter problem.”

The commission’s recommendation will be sent to the City Council for consideration March 2.

Proponents of the ban said the commissioners missed the point.

“The message was certainly diluted,” said Glenn Maddalon, executive directive of the Orange County chapter of the American Lung Assn.

“By the time it went through the commissioners, it became an issue on [littering], instead of the proposed ban and the harmful effect of secondhand smoke.”

The ban pushers were braced for the civil liberties argument.

“There’s a confusion about smokers’ right to smoke, that somehow under the constitution they have a right to smoke in public, and that’s not true,” said Molly Bowman, the local advocacy director for the American Heart Assn.

“I don’t think they’re listening, and they’re choosing to wrap themselves in a patriotic argument.”

Legal experts agree. A challenge to any ban on smoking would not be upheld by courts, according to Erwin Chemerinsky, a constitutional law professor at USC.

“There is no actual civil liberty to smoke,” he said. “Cities can prohibit smoking wherever they want, and there is no chance that it would be declared unconstitutional.”

If the San Clemente City Council chooses to ignore the commission’s recommendation and adopt the ban, it would join a small group of municipalities besides Solana Beach that ban smoking in their beaches.

Hanauma Bay in Hawaii and two New Jersey cities--Belmar and Mount Arlington -- also ban smokers from lighting up on the sand.

“There are a lot of people that are supportive of smoke-free beaches and parks,” Bowman said. “It’s just a matter of being a leader or being dragged into a situation.”