42 States have higher rates of smoking than NJ
Utah 1 8.8%
California 2 11.0%
Hawaii 3 13.1%
Connecticut 4 13.3%
Massachusetts 5 13.6%
Maryland 6 13.7%
Washington 7 13.9%
New Jersey 8 14.0%

https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/annual/measure/Smoking/state/NJ

The clean-up is costly.

At annual volunteer clean-ups, filters are the singular, most common item collected. This would not be at municipal beaches which have professional cleaning. Rather, at estuary points where slobs put their fishing lines in the water and throw the cig. butts on the beach.

Plastic bottles come in second.

Like, wives living for 30 years in enclosed houses with husbands who smoke like chimneys. That's completely different than what is involved in this situation.

I would bet any amount that science has got little to nothing in the way of epidemiological data re: people getting some occasional whiffs of smoke in windy, open to the world, outdoor spaces.

I mean, from a 'it's a smelly nuisance, I just don't wanna smell smoke, and I don't want my kids breathing it' standpoint, okay. I totally get that argument. But just be real about it.

No way there's demonstrable evidence that people are actually 'harmed' from a few occasional whiffs of smoke, out on a wide open beach.

I'd submit that if 'smoke' was THAT dangerous to bystanders on a beach? Then any actual 'smoker', who's consuming like 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 TIMES more 'molecules of smoke' than a 'second-hand smoker on the beach' ... in an average year ... would drop dead within a year of taking up the habit.

From a 'public health' standpoint, proper air and water pollution is orders of magnitude more dangerous in our everyday lives. Unless you live in a house with a smoker, who smokes inside, I mean.

This is really more about something being a smelly nuisance, and because there's kids at the beach and 'we don't like it' ... lets just be real, that's all I'm sayin.