At Scarborough beaches, it’s butt out

No-smoking ordinance wins approval, but some details remain up in the air.

published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH – After a two-week reprieve, the hammer finally fell last week on smokers in Scarborough.

At its April 20 meeting, the Town Council voted 4-2 to enact an ordinance outlawing the use of tobacco products within 25 feet of any public beach. 

Healthy Maine Partnerships has offered to supply no-smoking signs, and to pay for public education, in hopes of securing “voluntary compliance.”  For those who don’t comply, fines will start at $100 for each offense, up to a maximum of $500.

Councilors Jessica Holbrook and Richard Sullivan voted against the ordinance, although both raised hands earlier in the meeting for a resolution declaring town beaches to be “tobacco-free zones.”

“To go as far as making this an ordinance with fines and penalties, I just don’t see that it’s in the benefit of most of the public, or the police department, as far as enforcement goes,” said Sullivan.

The resolution was designed to mirror a similar anti-smoking stance taken by the council in December 2004, when it banned tobacco products from town athletic fields, playgrounds and “assembly areas.”

Council Chairwoman Judith Roy allowed the competing measure, she said, “to give credence” to councilors who preferred a more light-handed approach, “to have their opinions heard.”  Roy voted for the resolution, although she noted it was nullified immediately upon adoption of the ordinance. 

Like Roy, Councilor Michael Wood voted for both the resolution and the ordinance. The important thing, he said, was to accomplish something on the topic that night.

“I don’t want to be in the place where we were at the last meeting, where we left with no message [for the public],” he said.

However, two councilors, Karen D’Andrea and Carol Rancourt, appeared to favor the big-stick approach.

“[The resolution] has no weight of law behind it,” said D’Andrea.  “It’s sort of meaningless.  We’d be essentially asking people nicely not to smoke on the beach.”

“Most people are not lawbreakers,” said Rancourt, the only councilor who held office when the 2004 resolution was adopted.  “But if someone is blatantly breaking the law, with an ordinance, we would then have the teeth to take care of that person.”

Under questioning from Sullivan, Police Chief Robert Moulton – on hand as acting town manager while Thomas Hall was on vacation –intimated that his department’s teeth may snap shut only sparingly.  The beach-patrol officer, he said, is not equipped to carry a summons book, meaning assistance would be required from a regular-duty officer whenever a smoker is seen.  Spotting offenders also may be sporadic, he said, because recent changes in other ordinances will necessarily focus the beach patroller’s time on traffic concerns.

“There’s no question that the officer is going to be really busy,” said Moulton.

During public testimony, Toby Simon, the Cumberland County tobacco coordinator for Healthy Maine Partnerships, pooh-poohed the enforcement angle.

“As somebody who is doing tobacco control every day, this is the one issue that comes up repeatedly,” she said, citing similar shoreside smoking bans from California to South Portland.  “People think there will be major issues around enforcement. I can tell you it’s imaginary, that never turns out to be the case.

“All it takes is visible signage, accompanied by some public education,” said Simon, who called the ordinance “self-policing.”

“Most people will respect and abide by these laws, when you put them in place,” she said. “Even smokers do not have a problem coming along with these laws. They’re used to them. They’re everywhere now.”

“I think the time has come,” agreed Wood. “I think this is not an unexpected initiative, certainly.

“I’m convinced that enforcement really won’t be an issue,” he added later, just prior to the final vote.  “I’m willing to take that chance.”

What Wood was not willing to chance, however, was the possibility that the town might be required to build designated smoking areas.  On his motion, several lines in the ordinance citing “the designated smoking area” were changed, by unanimous vote, to “a designated smoking area.”

This “simple amendment,” Wood said, changed the ordinance’s “encumberment” from “shall build” to “may build.”  And that, he stressed, allows town planners time to design smoking areas, without forcing it to shoehorn them in to places like Higgins Beach, where private property lies within the 25-foot setback.

Private proximity prompted one other amendment, made at the suggestion of Holbrook. One passage, added to appease Higgins Beach abutters – at least one of whom was reported by Roy to be a smoker – created language that seemed to confuse, if not contradict, other sections.

An attempt to assure folks who live within 25 feet of a beach that they can smoke on their on land was simply unnecessary, the council ultimately agreed.

“I think this ordinance in and of itself is clear that it does not affect private property, that it only affects town-owned property,” said D’Andrea.

That left Sullivan to make two final assaults on the ordinance.  On the one-hand, he said, the lack of a designated smoking area from the onset means that, in some places, people will not even be able to return to their vehicle for a smoke, if it is parked too close to the beach. Roy was quick to shoot down that argument.

“Those people who do smoke, they have some rights as well,” she said, “but certainly they can’t subject their smoke on other folks.  That’s the designated area issue, but they’ll live without a cigarette for two hours.  They’ll live longer without a cigarette.”

Sullivan also railed on the addition of snuff, dip and chew to the list of banned substances. 

“I’ll tell you what, it looks like we are trying to control people’s behavior, instead of protecting the public,” he said. “I thought this was all about second-hand smoke, but whatever.”

Asked by Wood if he wanted to put his complaint into the form of a motion, Sullivan declined.

“I’m not going to make an amendment, I’m just making a statement,” he said.  “I’m not voting for [the ordinance] anyhow.”

Instead, it was Holbrook who championed the cause, which failed 4-2 after Rancourt described, with accompanying editorial sound effects, what happens when birds and children find nicotine-laced expectorate buried in the sand.

That misuse of public beaches seemed to be what drove the evening’s debate. Terri Eddy, staff adviser to the high school environmental club, described how students found “more than 1,000” cigarette butts during a recent cleanup event at Pine Point Beach. Each one, she claimed, takes up to 15 years to decompose.

“Scarborough needs a serious ordinance for this,” she said, pointing out that smoking has been banned from state beaches, including the one in Scarborough, since 1999.

Although the smoking ban is settled, where the public can puff remains up in the air. Holbrook addressed that concern during her closing comments at the end of the council meeting.

“I really, really hope that we get those [designated smoking] areas in,” she said. “I hope that’s it’s not two to three years, or never.

Still, the final word may have come from Wood, who quipped just after the local law was adopted, “The ordinance goes into affect at midnight – smoke ’em if you got ’em.”