The comments from director Simon Clark followed a recent report from the Clean Earth Trust in which it repeated calls for a beach smoking ban.
Guernsey is not the first place in the British Isles to consider a beach ban, and Mr Clark said only recently there was talk of a voluntary smoking ban on beaches in East Sussex.
‘Brighton has also looked at it, but the idea was rejected, and it was the same in Wales,’ he said.
‘A ban was introduced in Pembrokeshire but got laughed out of court because pictures showed vast expanses of sand with just one person on the beach.’
Clean Earth Trust’s report said it collected nearly 2,500 cigarette butts from beaches last year. But Mr Clark said this could be addressed by smokers being encouraged to carry a pocket ashtray.
These could even be provided at beach kiosks, he suggested. Local authorities should also provide more cigarette bins, although he suspected many did not do so for fear of being seen to encourage smoking. As for health issues, Mr Clark said that there was no evidence that smoking outside was harmful to anyone else’s health, including children.
‘It’s tiresome that, almost two decades after smoking was banned in every indoor public place, smokers should be having to fight for the right to smoke in the open air.
‘Yes, smokers should be considerate to the environment and to those around them, but banning smoking on beaches would be a massive overreaction. It would also be very difficult to enforce without the threat of significant penalties that are out of all proportion to the alleged offence.’
With no evidence that smoking on beaches harms children’s health, he thought that another aim was to stop children seeing people smoking because it might encourage them to take up the habit, something which he believed was unlikely. Everybody knew the health risks of smoking and Mr Clark’s view was that local authorities should keep out of it.
‘It’s none of their business if people choose to smoke,’ he said.
n Forest (the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco) was founded in 1979. It says it represents adults who choose to smoke tobacco, and non-smokers who are tolerant of other people smoking.
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