Is Marco Ready To Snuff Out Smoking on Beaches and Parks?

On June 24, 2022, Governor DeSantis signed HB 105 which renames the Florida Clean Indoor Air Act (FCIAA) the “Florida Clean Air Act” which expressly allows counties and municipalities to restrict smoking within the boundaries of any of the public beaches and public parks they own, except with regard to the smoking of unfiltered cigars. It went into effect July 1, 2022.

Florida has 633 miles of beaches attracting over 19 million tourists each year. A significant portion of Florida’s beaches is publicly owned, including federally owned areas managed by the National Park Service, parts of Florida’s 175 state parks, and the many beaches owned and managed by local governments along the coast. In general, access to these beaches is free through the numerous public access points.

The new law is designed to protect people from secondhand smoke and crack down on the abundance of cigarette butts in beaches and recreational spaces. For years, Florida’s beaches have been butt-friendly – that would soon change.

Cigarette butts are the number one form of litter on beaches and according to the Ocean Conservancy (OC), 4.5 trillion cigarette butts are littered each year. OC has collected more than 60 million cigarette butts from beaches since 1986. Littered cigarette butts leach toxic chemicals into the environment and can contaminate water, poison marine life and wildlife that mistake them for food.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) says “32 percent of all debris gathered in beach cleanups belong to cigarette butts. Fish and other animals may consider butts as food but are unable to digest them because of the presence of plastic and chemicals, and so they die.”

The City of Naples has been supporting legislative efforts to ban cigarette smoking on beaches for years and once HB 105 was signed, it did not take them long to discuss the possibility. Just recently, the Board of Collier County Commissioners also took this up as an agenda item and voted for a public hearing for a possible smoking ban on public beaches and parks. They will take up this issue again for either late October or early November.

Other Florida cities such as Miami Beach are trying to introduce an ordinance to ban smoking on their public beaches and parks citing “environmental and public health concerns.”

On Marco’s beaches, there is no shortage of cigarette butts during beach cleanups. Monthly beach cleanup volunteers pick up the usual trash such as broken glass bottles, plastic food wrappers, toys but there is one item more common than any other – cigarette butts.

On Marco Island, volunteers for the Beach and Coastal Resources Advisory Committee’s monthly beach cleanup have been collecting data on the ugly, yucky cigarette butts since 2018. Commonly picked up trash items, particularly cigarette butts, were sorted and counted; this practice was halted in 2020 due to COVID.

Cigarette butts have been a constant problem for Marco’s beaches. They are small and easily concealed underneath the sand; easily mistaken by wildlife for food and their filters are slow to degrade. The filters are known to contain toxins such as tar, arsenic, ammonia and formaldehyde. 

Is Marco ready to snuffout smoking and keep its pristine beach butt free?