OCEANSIDE – A proposal to ban smoking at the city's harbor and public parks, on its beaches and pier can't come soon enough for two local women walking their dogs on a harbor sidewalk yesterday.
DON KOHLBAUER / Union-Tribune
Cigarette smoking on the Oceanside Pier and beaches would be banned under a proposal being studied by members of two city commissions.
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“It's disgusting,” Kathleen Green Burnell said of the cigarette butts she notices when she takes her recreational vehicle to the harbor.
“I get a headache from the smell,” Connie Kelly Masteller said.
An ad-hoc group composed of three members each of the Parks and Recreation Commission and Harbor and Beaches Advisory Committee began its deliberations on a possible smoking ban Monday.
The panel will meet again June 8 and hear from Jean Feeney, manager with Vista Community Clinic's Tobacco Control Program.
Feeney will address two of Burnell's and Masteller's concerns. She is due to report on the effects of breathing secondhand smoke and on the cigarette litter on the beaches.
A beach cleanup in September near the Oceanside Municipal Fishing Pier yielded 8,500 cigarette butts, so volunteers expected to find fewer butts on the beach two months later in the same area, Feeney said in a telephone interview yesterday. But, she said, 9,500 butts were collected in November.
Last month, Feeney said, 3,700 cigarette butts were picked up on tiny Buccaneer Beach.
But, she advised, it's not fair to believe that smokers left all that residue on the beach. Often, it is washed to the beach from inland streets, she said.
On secondhand smoke, the California Air Resources Board reports that tobacco smoking in the state releases 40 tons of nicotine and 1,900 tons of carbon monoxide into the air yearly. Its sister agency, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessments, linked secondhand smoke to premature births, sudden infant death syndrome, heart disease and asthma.
If Oceanside institutes a ban, it will join other California cities that already have made the move or considered it. In 2003, Solana Beach was the first city in the state to ban smoking on the beach, and Del Mar followed this year.
Encinitas rejected such a prohibition in 2004 by a 3-2 vote. This week, a San Diego City Council committee will take up the question.
The Oceanside Parks and Recreation Department lists 11 cities where smoking is banned on beaches or in parks: El Segundo, Hermosa Beach, Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach, Long Beach, Malibu, Manhattan Beach, Newport Beach, San Clemente, Santa Monica and Torrance.
Councilwoman Shari Mackin first approached the city's Parks and Recreation Commission in March asking for a study of a smoking ban.
Mackin said yesterday that the proposal is fraught with “issues.”
Among those are what to do about smoking on restaurant patios and on privately owned boats in the public harbor.
Jim Jenkins, also at the harbor yesterday, suggested setting aside certain spaces, perhaps in the restaurants, for smokers. In general, though, Jenkins said he supports a ban.
So does Phil Siever, who has a boat in the harbor, although he said boaters probably should be allowed to smoke on their own vessel.
Only a man named Ken – he would not reveal his last name – disagreed.
Sitting in front of a yacht-sales office smoking a cigarette, Ken said, “I think there's plenty of air out here for everybody.”
Lola Sherman: (760) 476-8241; lola.sherman@uniontrib.com
