Four years after prohibiting smoking at town parks and playgrounds, Hingham officials are considering whether to expand the outdoor smoking ban to town-owned beaches, docks and cemeteries.

The expanded ban is one of several changes being floated by Hinghams board of health as it looks to update the towns smoking regulations, which were last revised in 2009. Another change would update the regulations to include electronic and herbal cigarettes.

Kirk Shilts, the boards chairman, said board members considered including beaches and other public spaces in the towns outdoor smoking ban in 2009 but eventually decided to limit the ban to town parks, playgrounds and recreational facilities.

No one has come back and said, This is overreach and you need to stop, Shilts said. If anything, weve had people say, Can you add the beaches? Can you add the Taste of Hingham?

Hingham was among several cities and towns that adopted outdoor smoking bans in the years after the states workplace smoking law was passed in 2004, prohibiting tobacco use in nearly all restaurants, shops and offices in Massachusetts, according to Cheryl Sbarra, director of the Massachusetts Association of Health Boards Tobacco Control Program. Sbarra said most of the outdoor smoking bans targeted beaches, playgrounds and other places frequented by children.

The thought of someone smoking at a kids baseball game was just offensive to people, she said.

Abington, Braintree, Kingston and Marshfield have all adopted some kind of outdoor smoking ban, according to a list compiled by the Massachusetts Municipal Association. The list includes only two communities with a ban on smoking in cemeteries: Great Barrington and Malden.

Unlike indoor smoking bans, which are aimed at protecting non-smokers from the hazards of secondhand smoke, outdoor smoking rules are about changing perceptions, especially among young people, Shilts said. Its more about the attitude toward smoking and how that perception and that activity is perceived by children, he said. We dont want that perception to be fostered, that this is something that is cool that adults do and that a child would want to emulate.

Some public health advocates, however, say that outdoor bans go too far and undermine ongoing efforts to stop workplace smoking in parts of the country where it is still legal. Michael Siegel, a professor of community health sciences at Boston Universitys School of Public Health, said he doesnt buy the argument that towns should adopt outdoor bans just to keep smoking out of view from children.

It would be like prohibiting eating fast food in public or something like that. It makes no sense, he said. We generally recognize that people are free to do what they want as long as its not directly harming other people.

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Hingham may extend smoking ban to beaches, cemeteries