NYC may ban smoking in parks, on beaches

September 16, 2010|Associated Press

NEW YORK — New York City is pursuing a tough new policy that would shoo smokers out of public parks, beaches, and even the heart of Times Square — one of the most ambitious outdoor antitobacco efforts in the nation.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration and city lawmakers announced yesterday that they will pursue a broad extension of the city’s smoking ban to 1,700 parks and 14 miles of public beaches, plus boardwalks, marinas, and pedestrian plazas.

That would mean no smoking in Central Park, no lighting up on the Coney Island boardwalk, and putting the cigarettes away if you’re lounging on the traffic-free pedestrian plazas in Times Square and Herald Square.

“When New Yorkers and visitors to our city go to the parks and beaches for fresh air, there will actually be fresh air for them to breathe,’’ Bloomberg said at a City Hall news conference.

States and cities from Maine to California have banned smoking in public parks and beaches, but New York is pursuing one of the widest-reaching urban bans. By including pedestrian plazas, the Bloomberg administration also is venturing into territory most antitobacco bans leave alone: smoking on the street.

The boundaries of the plazas, in most cases, are sidewalks, bike lanes, and street corners, and if the law passes, it would be easy for a smoker to drift from the sidewalk, where smoking is still allowed, into a plaza, where it is not, without realizing.

Smokers shrugged off the news of a possible ban yesterday.

Gene Buelow, who stopped for a smoke in a Times Square pedestrian plaza, said it “wouldn’t bother me a bit.’’