{"id":791,"date":"2004-03-22T06:55:43","date_gmt":"2004-03-22T11:55:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/03\/cleaning_up_the_beach\/"},"modified":"2004-03-22T06:55:43","modified_gmt":"2004-03-22T11:55:43","slug":"cleaning_up_the_beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/03\/cleaning_up_the_beach\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleaning Up the Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No smoking activists <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/2004\/0322\/p01s04-usju.html\">hit the beach<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Ten years after California set a national precedent by banning smoking in restaurants and bars &#8211; and months after prohibiting it within feet of government buildings and playgrounds &#8211; many of the state&#8217;s coastal cities are now banning smoking at the beach.<br \/>\nHealth and environmental officials say the moves are a logical extension of smoking bans in other public places and are necessary to meet state and federal antipollution requirements.<br \/>\nSome legislators, however, fear the government is prying too far into private lives, with unnecessary and overly puritanical dictums.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Smoking is a very unhealthy practice and I support most of the public bans on indoor smoking.  But this does seem to be overkill.  Particularly if, as the article claims, only 17% of Californians smoke.  I don&#8217;t see the danger from second-hand smoke in an open air environment like the beach is what some people are making it out to be&#8211;one great enough to warrant the government intrusion on private conduct.  But, based on the beaches I&#8217;ve seen, the litter issue the smoke-free advocates are raising is a legitimate; something more should be done to deal with all the butts left in the sand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/03\/cleaning_up_the_beach\/\" rel=\"bookmark\" title=\"Permalink to Cleaning Up the Beach\"><p>No smoking activists hit the beach: Ten years after California set a national precedent by banning smoking in restaurants and bars &#8211; and months after prohibiting it within feet of government buildings and playgrounds &#8211; many of the state&#8217;s coastal cities are now banning smoking at the beach. Health and environmental officials say the moves [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}