Smoking snuffed in Memorial Park
Nyack has joined a growing number of communities across the United States by banning smoking in a public park.
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Starting soon, smokers who light up in Memorial Park, with its sweeping views of the Tappan Zee Bridge, will risk a $250 fine.
Some cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City, already prohibit smoking in parks. New York City is debating whether to make its parks, playgrounds and beaches smoke-free.
Smoking is banned in county parks in Rockland, Westchester and Putnam while some towns and villages, such as Orangetown, Sloatsburg and Carmel, also do not permit smoking at their beaches and parks. Many communities, including Nyack, for years have outlawed smoking in playgrounds.
The move to ban smoking outdoors – Rockland Community College recently forbid smoking on its sprawling campus – has reignited debate over the rights of smokers in taxpayer-funded places versus the rights of people who do not want to inhale dangerous secondhand smoke.
For nonsmokers like Justine Hoagland, who eats lunch in Memorial Park daily, the new policy is welcome. Not far from where she lay on the grass, hundreds of discarded cigarette butts littered the gravel path near the Hudson River.
“I appreciate the small steps,” said Hoagland, the school nurse at Nyack College. “It started with the bars and clubs. Now it’s moving to the parks.”
Nyack residents and visitors shouldn’t have to breathe secondhand smoke, even outdoors, and children shouldn’t have to see people smoking, said Trustee Richard Kavesh, who introduced the bill.
“Parks are supposed to be clean, green places,” he said.
Smokers themselves are divided. Some felt further marginalized; others didn’t think it was that big of a deal.
At Memorial Park, smokers can walk a block to Piermont Avenue to light up.
Nyack Mayor John Shields was the lone dissenting vote against the smoking ban.
“It’s kind of an onerous law that people can’t smoke outdoors,” he said. “More than that, how is it going to be enforced?”
Since the police are unlikely to make it a priority, Shields feared it might lead to unnecessary confrontations between smokers and nonsmokers. He also noted that Nyackers are exposed to secondhand smoke walking down village streets on a Friday or Saturday night when smokers congregate outside bars, clubs and restaurants.
Audrey Silk, founder of New York City Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, a grassroots organization to protect the interests of smokers, said such laws were a waste of time.
“This absolutely has nothing to do with public health. This has something to do with somebody’s idea of public morals,” said Silk.
Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, D-Bronx, has submitted a bill to forbid smoking in all public parks and beaches across New York.
“The rationale is very simple. Smoking kills not only the people who smoke but the people around them,” Dinowitz said. “I don’t think people should be exposed to smoke around them, especially in a public park.”
Dinowitz’s bill would let localities designate a smoking area in a park.
Michael Seilback, vice president of public policy and communications for the American Lung Association in New York, said studies show that children exposed regularly to smoking are more likely to start smoking.
“More and more, we’re trying to show our kids that cigarettes aren’t the sexy, glorified image that we see in ‘Mad Men’ back in the 1960s,” said Seilback, citing the television show. “Smoking is highly addictive, and becoming a lifelong smoker can shorten your life.”
Seilback said secondhand smoke can trigger an attack for a person with asthma or a respiratory ailment.
According to a 2008 phone survey of 449 Rockland adults for Pow’r Against Tobacco, only 11 percent of Rockland residents smoke – and 85 percent of county residents polled, including a majority of smokers, would favor at least restricting smoking in parks.
Since 2002, Westchester County has banned smoking in its parks, swimming pools, beaches and golf courses – altogether 50 parks, comprising 18,000 acres. It installed signage and added receptacles in some parks at certain entrances where people can smoke. The policy operates on the honor system and gentle societal pressure, much the way people curb their dogs or buckle their seat belt.
“At the places we can patrol, where we do have police or we have park workers, people are pretty cooperative,” said Peter Tartaglia, spokesman for Westchester County Parks.
Orangetown police Chief Kevin Nulty, whose department patrols Nyack, said the most crucial consideration is to have voluntary compliance.
“By the time the police get called, the person might be done smoking,” Nulty said. “What are we going to do, go smell their breath? I don’t think it’s an ideal law for the police to enforce.”
By Khurram Saeed, October 4, 2009
