Smoking Ban On FL Beaches Now Possible In New Law

FLORIDA — Florida beach residents and conservationists are hailing the signing of a bill by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as a victory, finally permitting cities and counties to keep cigarette butts off beaches, something Florida communities have been attempting since 2003.

DeSantis signed House Bill 105 Friday that builds on a 2002 state constitutional amendment, the Florida Clean Indoor Air Act, that prohibited smoking in restaurants and other indoor workplaces.

Senate sponsor Joe Gruters (R-Sarasota), who unsuccessfully sponsored the bill every year since 2019, said the intention of the bill was to rid beaches of cigarette butts that don’t quickly biodegrade and pose a hazard to marine life and shore birds.

“If you live near a beach, the number one picked-up item consistently on an annual basis over and over again are cigarette butts,” Gruters said.

The bill was struck down in past years becuase of heavy lobbying efforts by the tobacco industry.

According to Tobacco-Free Life, even if they’re dropped on the land, cigarette butts can find their way into the ocean, causing a choking hazard and leaching toxic chemicals into the water, posing a risk to many forms of marine life.

While taking her daily walk on St. Pete Beach in June 2019, Largo resident Karen Mason snapped some disturbing photos of a black skimmer mother, a seabird that nests each summer on Gulf beaches, feeding a discarded cigarette butt to her newborn chick.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Institute in St. Petersburg said the mother bird most likely mistook the cigarette butt for one of the silver-white minnows in the Gulf that serve as the birds' main source of food.

Mason's photo went viral, appearing in media around the world and prompting environmentalists to renew their efforts to ban smoking on beaches.

See related story: Butts Off The Beach: Black Skimmer Feeds Cigarette Butt To Chick

Over the years, a number of Florida cities and counties tried to pass smoking prohibitions on beaches; however, a provision in Florida statutes expressly pre-empted the regulation of smoking to the state.

That pre-emption was upheld in 2011, when the Florida attorney general concluded that St. Johns Water Management District could not prohibit smoking on district property, and again in 2017, when the courts upheld the pre-emption after Sarasota tried to ban smoking in parks and was challenged by the ACLU.

The smoking ban at beaches bill, among 37 bills signed by DeSantis Friday, removed that pre-emption, opening the door for cities and counties to adopt smoking prohibitions at city- and county-owned beaches.

Sen. Jason Brodeur (R-Lake Mary) added an amendment to HB 105 on Feb. 18 providing an exemption for "the smoking of unfiltered cigars."

Due to the lack of plastic filters that don't biodegrade or contain toxic chemicals, cigars aren't a danger to marine life, Brodeur argued.

The amendment came as a relief to major cigar factories in Ybor City, suchas the historic J.C. Newman Cigar Co., the last cigar factory remaining in Ybor City, now operated by a third generation of the Newman family.

Ybor City's tradition of creating hand-rolled cigars is a significant source of tourism in Tampa. Factories attract daily tours of visitors eager to see cigar makers hand roll cigars in the same time-honored tradition of the original factories.

At one time, more than 200 cigar factories operated in Ybor City manufacturing more than 500 million cigars every year and leading to Ybor City's nickname, "Cigar City."

The cigar industry has been cited by historians as a major factor in Tampa's development into a major metropolitan Florida city.

Today, there are only a handful of cigar manufacturers remaining and Gruters, in agreeing to the amendment, noted that the number of cigar smokers on beaches is negligible compared to cigarette smokers.

He said he never intended to go after cigars or hurt the cigar industry. His concern was for the cigarette butts littering beaches.

“All these cleanup days that we do, year after year, the No. 1 item that’s always found are the cigarette butts,” he said during a news conference from a Sarasota beach in January. “I always say we want freedom, but, at the same time, we want quiet, peaceful enjoyment without putting your hands in your sand and picking up someone’s cigarette butts.”

So far, no counties and cities have drawn up ordinances prohibiting cigarette smoking on beaches, but elected leaders say it's only a matter of time.

Among them is the Madeira Beach City Commission, which tried passing a smoking ban in 2019 by bypassing the state's Clean Indoor Air Act and tackling the problem with an anti-litter ordinance that imposed $25 fines for discarding cigarette butts on beaches. However, the city was told the ordinance was no enforceable.