Don’t pass what can’t be enforced

Effective laws, regardless of their merit, are those that can be

enforced effectively.

A Costa Mesa-based environmental group’s efforts to convince

coastal cities to ban smoking on their beaches certainly has merit,

but its practicality is questionable.

“How in the world would you enforce that?” Newport Beach City

Councilman Steve Bromberg has rightly asked. “You would have to give

lifeguards police power, and that’s not something I would be inclined

to support.”

Earth Resource Foundation has cited the surplus of butts on

beaches as a problem grave enough for city governments to add a new

law, but do we need another law that lacks a backbone? Littering is

already illegal on the beach, but beachgoers leaving anything behind

-- from cigarette butts to bags of leftovers picked through by

seagulls -- usually leave the sand unscathed and unpunished.

Will the same officials who enforce beach littering laws enforce

the new anti-smoking law as judiciously?

Few reasonable people would likely say they support cigarette

butts on the beach, but maybe there are more reasonable solutions

that don’t require adding laws. Stephanie Barger, executive director

and founder of the Earth Resource Foundation, has suggested that

cities provide appropriate receptacles for butts on beaches, since

some smokers fear starting fires in trash cans.

Perhaps Newport Beach officials could raise littering fines, post

some notices of the increase on the beach and pay for new receptacles

with the earnings. This is, of course, contingent upon the city

making greater efforts to enforce its litter laws.

The beach, unlike a restaurant or bar, is an expansive place that

allows a lot of activity to go unseen. Enforcing the ban would be

much more difficult at the beach, Newport Beach Police Chief Bob

McDonell has said.

Further, where will smokers go if they can’t go outside? Barger

also cites secondhand smoke as a problem at the beach, but secondhand

smoke is a problem wherever one finds a smoker. Smoking is still

legal, and until it isn’t, an effort to single out the littering

smokers deserves to be made before writing a law that punishes them

all.