by Garrison Frost

Rancho Palos Verdes recently became the latest South Bay city to ban smoking on its beaches. The ostensible reason for the decision was to protect nonsmoking beachgoers from second-hand smoke. This was deemed necessary, despite the fact that Rancho Palos Verdes with its rocky coastline doesn't really have too many accessible beaches, and visitors to the ones that do exist have a lot more to fear from hazardous surf, underwater rocks and the occasional punch in the face from the territorial locals than they do from a smoldering Marlboro.

As far as I can tell, Rancho Palos Verdes' action leaves only one South Bay city – Redondo Beach – that has yet to pass the smoking ban. But Redondo Beach's day will come. All non-smoking advocates have to do is point out that the city is the last refuge of the tanning smoker and the smoking, and the electeds will cave. Then the South Bay beach smoking ban will be complete. You won't be able to puff on any beach between Dockweiler and Cabrillo Beach.

I say that the concerns about second-hand smoke were the ostensible reasons for Rancho Palos Verdes' ban, and that was the case with all the other beaches that have imposed bans as well. Of course, the science is pretty well decided that smoking is bad for smokers. Tobacco companies and libertarians will argue that science has yet to prove conclusively that second-hand smoke poses serious health risks, but I have chosen to believe that it does. And while I am not necessarily convinced that anyone's health is threatened by a single smoker standing 100 feet upwind from me on a beach swept by ocean breezes, I have nonetheless chosen to embrace that idea as well. It is this very notion that drives the libertarians crazy, that otherwise intelligent people will embrace the idea that smoking outdoors in a very well ventilated area like the beach could possibly pose a risk to anyone. The libertarians would say that this concept is merely a cover for what's really going on here: lifestyle legislation. They would argue that we're really just trying to impose our values on others.

Well, so what?

It's not as though no one ever does that. There's a reason, for instance why we don't have adult video stores next to elementary schools, or allow people to drink whiskey on school playgrounds. So it shouldn't be hard to comprehend why a city whose entire identity is tied up in the beach culture would view someone lighting a cigarette on the sand the same way someone else would view a grown man trying to stick a chicken up his ass. To most people who live on the beach, it's just wrong. It's not a choice. It's not personal liberty. It's just 2 + 2 = 7 wrong.

But we're not able to frame the issue that way. And that's probably a good thing. If we were, jackasses like Bill O'Reilly would have us wearing T-shirts with Bill Frist's face on them. So for now we make due with pushing the idea that one little cigarette on an open beach might actually give cancer to someone a few hundred yards downwind. Sure, we don't exactly buy it ourselves, but we'll advocate for the idea without blinking.

A few days ago, in a local newspaper, a perfectly reasonable man argued that because he wasn't hurting anybody when he went down to the beach to read the paper and smoke a cigar, there shouldn't be a law preventing him from doing so. I'd be the first to agree with him that he's probably not hurting anybody, but I would still vote for a law outlawing his cigar. And that's because I have a vision of what a beach is supposed to look like, and it doesn't include his cigar. Him and his beach chair maybe, but not his cigar. To me, looking at that cigar is no different from having to watch a monkey have sex with a mailbox. That's how I see it. But it's also how a lot of other people see it too, so many in fact, that we make up a pretty strong majority.

Is this entire idea un-American? Does it compromise the ideal of personal liberty? Sure it does, when you put it like that. But when you describe it as a health hazard, it looks totally different. And while I don't buy into the idea that it's a significant health hazard, who the hell am I to argue? I'm no scientist. I'm just a guy who thinks that smoking on the beach is as fundamentally wrong as trying to teach a blender to speak French. If it seems cynical to embrace an illogical argument to keep the beach the way I think it should be, it's no more cynical than those who quote the Constitution and talk of personal liberty just because they can't wait until their kids are through building their sand castle before they stick yet another burning wad of dried leaves in their face.

Unfortunately for any smoker trying to get a tan, there are a lot of people who see it the same way I dos.

(Oct. 12, 2006)

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