Beach Smoking: Tide Is Turning

It started on a strand of coastline just over a mile long.

Now, a growing number of Southern California coastal cities are following the lead of Solana Beach and moving to ban smoking on their beaches. But because of the patchwork of city, county and state beaches in Southern California, smokers may need to add global positioning devices to their sunscreen and magazines to determine whether their favorite beach is in a smoking zone.

County-operated state and county beaches in Los Angeles, Santa Monica and Malibu will abide by those cities’ smoking bans, county officials say.

But smoking has not been prohibited at other county- and state-run beaches in Los Angeles and Orange counties. Some no-smoking beaches have designated smoking areas. And on some oceanfront stretches, a person can straddle an invisible line where smoking is legal on one side but not the other.

One organization hopes to eliminate the confusion. “The ultimate goal is to have the entire state of California have smoke-free beaches,” said Ananya Mullane, youth program coordinator for the Earth Resource Foundation, one of 30 groups expected to gather today in Huntington Beach for “World No-Tobacco Day 2004.”

Such a wholesale ban on smoking would require state legislation to include state beaches, and none has been proposed. But no-smoking advocates say they are surprised at how quickly the movement to ban smoking has spread.

“I think it’s an idea whose time has come, and I think that’s why [so many cities] are catching the smoke-free beach wave,” said Debra Kelley, vice president of the American Lung Assn. of San Diego.

San Clemente, which in March became the first Orange County city to ban smoking, has set aside four designated-smoking areas on its beach and at the base of its pier.

On Tuesday, the Newport Beach City Council will discuss a smoking ban, and city councils in Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach have ordered draft ordinances to prohibit smoking on their municipal beaches. Seal Beach is gathering research.

Those cities represent every municipally operated beach in Orange County. Dana Point officials are unaffected by the debate because their beaches are run by the county and state.

The extension of city bans onto state beaches may apply to only one state beach in Orange County -- Corona del Mar State Beach, which is operated by Newport Beach.

In contrast, beach-goers in Huntington Beach and San Clemente will be able to smoke on state-run beaches there, but not on the city beaches. Smokers will have to watch for signs to know where they are treading.

But don’t expect law enforcement to be patrolling the no-smoking borders. Officials in both counties say they are depending on voluntary compliance.

“We’re hoping that through signage and public education that compliance rates will be high,” said Bill Humphreys, San Clemente’s marine safety chief. “Right now, we’re not requesting any additional manpower” to patrol the beaches.

“The goal here is not to unleash an army of cops on the beach,” said Los Angeles Councilman Jack Weiss. “The goal here is to change people’s attitudes on where it is socially acceptable to smoke, just like the successful move to ban smoking in restaurants.”

Kelley, of the American Lung Assn., said she was confident that smokers would oblige. “Smokers are actually quite good about obeying the rules when they know what the rules are,” she said.

Los Angeles County and Orange County officials have casually discussed banning smoking on all of their beaches, but not so in Ventura and San Diego counties.

And not every jurisdiction is jumping on the ban bandwagon. Even after Solana Beach led the way in California, neighboring Encinitas rejected the notion.

Officials said such a law would be difficult to enforce and that existing laws address the problem of cigarette butts.

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Times staff writer Jean-Paul Renaud contributed to this report.