Last Updated: 4:43 p.m.
Mirroring Flagler Beach, which passed a similar ordinance two years ago, the Flagler County Commission today approved on first reading a prohibition on smoking or vaping in any public park or public recreation area, with a notable exception: unfiltered cigars. While the ban applies to county-owned portions of the beach, it does not apply in most portions.
The proposed ordinance passed with little discussion on a unanimous vote of the commission. Second reading is expected in two weeks. The prohibition will be in effect shortly after that. It does not apply in Palm Coast parks, where Tobacco-Free Flagler’s educational signs encourage non-smoking, but without the authority of an ordinance.
Forrest Hahn, the father of four and president of Flagler Babe Ruth baseball, commended commissioners for the ordinance, which he had encouraged two years ago. “to help protect our athletes in Flagler,” he said. Terry Williams of Tobacco-Free Flagler was also grateful, reflecting on the considerable work necessary to get the commission to this point. “It seems like it was something that was never going to happen, and I’m just glad to see it has,” she said. “Palm Coast I’m working on, and will keep working on. But I just thank you. It’s a hard thing to get done. I don’t know why, but it’s been difficult.”
While the ban will apply on portions of county-owned beach, such as Jungle Hut Road, Bay Park, 16th Road and Varn Park, an earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that the ban also extended to the remaining portions of the beach. It does not: those portions are privately owned up to the mean high water mark, while the rest of the beach is state owned, so the county’s ban would not apply there. County Attorney Al Hadeed called it an “anomaly,” especially since the intent of the state law was to help localities keep their beaches cleaner of discarded smoking materials.
Spaces where people could smoke have been shrinking since the 1985 Florida Clean Air Act, which prohibited smoking in places such as government buildings, elevators, public transportation, hospitals, day care centers, stairwells and lobbies while preserving designated smoking places, including in restaurants and public arenas. Voters in 2002 eliminated all indoor workplace smoking, and in 2018 extended the ban to vaping in indoor workspaces. In early 2022, lawmakers passed a bill allowing local governments to extend the ban to public parks or the state’s 825 miles of beaches–with that cigar exception.
Different explanations have been given for the exception. When Flagler Beach passed its ban in 2022, the city clerk said it did not apply to cigars because cigars don’t leave polluting filters behind, as cigarette butts do, hence the prohibition on filtered cigars. But the Tampa Bay Times reported last year that the cigar exception was a political maneuver to save the bill from getting killed by cigar lovers.
“State Rep. Randy Fine, a Brevard County Republican who sponsored the 2022 bill that became law, said he initially wanted to allow local governments to ban all forms of smoking,” the paper reported. “After pushback from colleagues who he described as ‘fans of the cigar industry,’ he said he agreed to create the carveout. He knew previous efforts to pass such a law had failed, and he didn’t want an insistence on allowing cigar bans to kill his.” The same exemption was carved into the Senate version of the bill because Sen. Jason Brodeur, the paper reported, had said that if campers at county parks could burn campfires, they should be able to smoke cigars.
The Flagler County prohibition goes further than Flagler Beach’s. That city’s ordinance was silent on vaping and marijuana. The county’s ordinance will not be. The county ban applies to “cigarettes, filtered cigars, or pipes, or use [of] any other devices to inhale smoke from burning tobacco products or to inhale vapor from vapor-generating electronic devices,” the ordinance’s wording reads, “unless such activities occur in an area designated for smoking or use of vapor-generating electronic device by posted signage. Provided however, this
prohibition does not apply to the smoking of unfiltered cigars.”
County Commissioner Donald O’Brien noted the wording’s silence on marijuana. If voters approve the recreational marijuana amendment proposed on the November ballot, “I want to make sure we have language in here that prevents the smoking or vaping of marijuana,” O’Brien said. That wording will be added. “Nothing legally that stop us from including it now,” County Attorney Al Hadeed said.
“Even when it’s legal, it’ll be illegal at the federal level, right?” Commissioner Leann Pennington said. It is illegal now, though FBI agents are not exactly crawling public parks and beaches to catch smokers in the act (there are no records of such dragnets in recent years), and the federal government is preparing to reclassify marijuana as what would amount to an over-the-counter medicine like Tylenol, leaving it to the 26 states where it is currently illegal to decide how to regulate it. In Florida, only medical marijuana is legal. A ballot proposal in November requires approval from 60 percent of voters to legalize recreational marijuana.
Nevertheless, it’s been illegal to smoke even medical marijuana in Florida’s public outdoor settings or in indoor workplaces–including such public settings as streets or sidewalks.
As for Palm Coast, “I would imagine that would have to be something that would have to be initiated by City Council,” a city spokesperson said today.
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