MIAMI BEACH, FLA. (WSVN) - Miami Beach commissioners want to clear the air.
Starting next year, there will be no smoking on the beach or in the public parks.
It’s an effort to keep beaches beautiful and wildlife healthy.
When you go to Miami Beach you see miles of beautiful blue water but also cigarette butts.
“There are the right butts on the beach, then there are the wrong butts in the beach, and the wrong butts are the cigarette butts,” said Commissioner Alex Fernandez. “They’re the ones that are bad for our health and they also contain micro plastics that don’t disintegrate.”
The City of Miami Beach is taking advantage of a new state law that went into effect this summer, which said local governments have the power to ban smoking on public beaches and parks.
Environmental advocates rejoiced at the city’s move to ban filtered cigarettes.
“Cigarette butts contain thousands of chemicals that are very toxic, including tar, nicotine, arsenic and when they put them in the beach, in the sand, those chemicals leach out into the sand, and that’s where our kids play,” said Dave Dobler, volunteer of cleanup.org.
“We sometimes make it a challenge, whoever can fill up the bottle first wins a prize, and they all come back after five minutes because there are so many cigarette butts, and we’ve barely made a dent,” said Sophie Ringel, founder of Clean Miami Beach.
Even one smoking resident applauded the move.
“I’m a smoker. I became addicted at age 14,” the resident said. “I hate the fact that I won’t be able to smoke on the beach, but i’m happy for our kids.”
But it didn’t come without some push-back from one commissioner, who was the lone “no” vote.
“To have to go and impose yet another meaningless piece of regulation. I don’t think that’s the best use of our scarce police resources. and I don’t believe in penalizing something that is lawful, which is smoking,” said Commissioner Ricky Arriola.
The law will go into effect Jan. 1.
The first fine will be $100, then $200, then $500, and officers have the discretion to make arrests.
But city commissioners said their goal is to make people aware and not make arrests.
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