New Jersey plan to ban smoking on beaches should be extinguished
Salty air, Hawaiian Tropic oil, and Marlboro Mediums. That combination is one of my most pleasant scent memories of my life. Post-college, pre-marriage, summer of 1997. Beach Haven, where myself and 20 others rented a tiny shack for the summer. I was at New Jersey Monthly at the time, and we got out at noon on Fridays in the summer.
I was on the beach by 2 p.m., first one at the house, a few hours until people started trickling in and the idiocy would start.
But on those Friday afternoons, I’d sit on the beach, read some Elmore Leonard, and marinate in the smell. I’m serious, man: That three-headed smell combo — salt air, suntan oil, cigarettes — was heaven. As I sit here typing this, the smell is in my nostrils. It’s that powerful a memory.
And one day — assuming lung or skin cancer don’t get me first — I’ll be old enough to start smoking again while basking in the sun with tanning accelerant on me. (The math works there. Say I’m 80 and start doing that. Really don’t need to worry about lung or skin cancer then, right? I’m like ten steps ahead of you, amirite? Anyway …)
Anyway, if New Jersey politicians get their way, I won’t be able to ever experience my happy smell ever again, as a bill sailed through the Senate Environment and Energy Committee last week (and will undoubtedly sail through the legislature when the time comes) that would ban smoking on all New Jersey beaches.
It’s a bad bill and I hope when it gets to Gov. Phil Murphy’s desk, he vetoes it, just like Chris Christie did twice before.
Listen: As an ex-smoker, I’m all for eliminating smoking from the world. It’s a killer. I’ve even advocated that New Jersey ban the sale of cigarettes (current smokers would be grandfathered in). But cigarettes are still legal, and the state sticking its nose in what should be a local decision (18 shore towns have banned smoking on beaches, according to a NJ101.5 report) is flat-out wrong. And the penalties — $250 if you’re caught lighting a ciggie! — are atrocious.
As with every other progressive/liberal and/or Communist bill that comes out of the New Jersey legislature, I turn my head west and see what the Republic of California is doing on the subject.
As it turns out, their legislature has had the same idea, advancing bills that would ban smoking on beaches.
And both times it’s reached the desk of Gov. Jerry Brown, he’s vetoed it.
“If people can’t smoke even on a deserted beach, where can they?” Brown said in his veto message. “There must be some limit to the coercive power of government.”
Agree +100.
For the record, California’s bill would have also banned marijuana smoke on the beaches (oh, you wacky Californians!) and — and I swear I’m not making this up — the bill was written by a citizen named — again, I promise this is true — Scott St. Blaze, who was described in a San Jose Mercury News article as a “Los Angeles surfer.”
I need to move to California. But in the meantime, I’m here in Jersey, and the idea of the state clamping down on people’s ability to smoke cigarettes outside ain’t cool. It’s overreach, it’s a local issue, and I’m lathering on the Hawaiian Tropic as we speak.