Banned in New York

Last month New York City outlawed smoking in parks, beaches, and public plazas. With 1,700 parks and 14 miles of public beaches, this is no small matter, practically and conceptually. Smoking bans in parks aren’t new, it’s just the scale of the ban in New York that gives one pause for thought. Many eyes will be on the city to see if it will succeed or fail. Mayor Michael Bloomberg views the ban as a piece of a larger set of public health initiatives (think trans-fats and New York restaurants). Whether you’re a smoker, an anti-smoker, or just a neutral non-smoker, the health reasons for not smoking in parks are compelling. Our new health column in the March issue of Parks & Recreation offers a litany of reasons for why parks should be tobacco-free—protecting children from second-hand smoke, environmental degradation caused by littered butts, the poor example set for children by smoking in public places, and, simply, the contradiction of allowing unhealthy behavior where outdoor living, fitness, and recreation activities are being promoted as a key element of improving public health.

Will prohibiting smoking in New York’s parks and beaches save lives? Last summer when the city was working on the ban, its health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Farley, told the New York Times more people die in the city from the effects of smoking than AIDS, homicide, and suicide combined – 7,500 preventable deaths. But will New Yorkers just smoke somewhere else or, worse, simply ignore the ban altogether, since it is mostly unenforceable? (It relies on citizen peer pressure, not law enforcement.)

All that’s left to argue is the notion of governmental overreach. And that one won’t be settled overnight.

Still, if I had to add one more reason in support of the ban, it would be economics. Just to rid its beaches each year of littered butts costs New York City taxpayers millions of dollars. And in a climate where budget cutting is reaching feeding-frenzy proportions, a million here and a million there will fund a lot of teachers, police officers, and park employees who might otherwise be laid off.

Phil Hayward
Editor
Parks & Recreation Magazine