Cigarette butts are the #1 pollutant in the state of Florida!  The Navarre Beach Sea Turtle Conservation Center reports that volunteers pick up an average of 20,700 cigarette butts yearly during their Trash Bash Event which lasts only 2 hours per month!

It takes over 10 years for cigarette butts to break down in the environment. They contain arsenic and each year thousands of cigarette butts are found in the stomachs of dead birds, sea turtles and dolphins who mistakenly saw the cigarettes as food. The picture above is a Black Skimmer mistakenly feeding a cigarette butt to its chick!  The Black Skimmers are on the 2016 State of the Birds Watch List, which lists bird species at risk of becoming threatened or endangered without conservation action.

The Florida Clean Air Act was first created in 1985 to protect Public Health. One of its amendments allows local governments to enact policies to restrict smoking in outdoor shared spaces that they own such as public parks and public beaches. Smoking also exposes others to secondhand smoke which is estimated to have killed over 2.5 million non-smokers in the United States since 1964.

Our largest attraction to tourists and residents is our beaches.  It’s our responsibility to keep our beaches clean.  There is NO constitutional right to smoke!  Currently all Santa Rosa County parks have signs advising of a no smoking rule.  The City of Milton just voted to not allow smoking in their city parks.  It’s time to include our beaches – to keep them beautiful and protect our wildlife. Please sign and share this petition.  “Leave No Trace”