A July article from Health Affairs published just how many parks and beaches in United States have banned smoking, since 1993. The picture for US parks is below:
These bans have grown in popularity even though the risk of secondhand smoke is dramatically reduced outdoors. In fact, many US parks are quite large, from what I’ve seen, and it is verging on the draconian for public health officials to be adopting these bans with such increasing frequency.
I would prefer, instead, significantly stiffer penalties for littering, while clearly warning people that abandoned cigarette butts are a form of litter.
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