Florida lawmakers make progress on bill banning beach smoking

Almost every year, for the past 30 years, cigarette butts have been the No. 1 piece of litter found on beaches around the world. Food wrappers have surged ahead recently, but cigarette butts are still a close second and lawmakers hope to drive them even lower down the list.

Under the legislation, Florida cities and counties would be able to ban smoking at public beaches and parks they own.That’s because filters contain plastic -- and that’s the type of pollution lawmakers are hoping to address. An analysis of this bill says of the estimated 6 trillion cigarette smokes every year around the world, up to two-thirds of these cigarette butts are discarded as litter. The butts also contain hazardous substances that can be toxic to animals.If approved, it would impact Florida’s 67 county park systems and more than 400 city park systems.

Rep. Thad Altman, an Indialantic Republican who has co-sponsored the bill, said it builds on a 2002 constitutional amendment that prohibited smoking in restaurants and at other indoor workplaces. “What we found is that at a lot of our public parks or beaches, you’d go to a Little League game, you’d see smoke going into the dugout around the kids,” Altman said. “There was no way of enforcing that.”A similar bill is pending in the Florida Senate. In the Senate version of this bill, there would be exemptions for pipe tobacco and cigars that don’t have filters or plastic tips.Copyright 2022 by WJXT News4Jax - All rights reserved.

Anyone against this has never done a beach cleanup. Butts everywhere-and they’re plastic so don’t break down. Set up your chairs, get settled in and it’s inevitable a smoker moves in just upwind to “share” all day.

No more snacks at the beach coming next , then Putin.

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