Smoking at Crescent Beach in Cape Elizabeth last Thursday, Bobby Hughes was unaware of a new law banning smoking there.

Hughes wasn’t alone. As beachgoers celebrated the start of the season Memorial Day weekend, many of them were unaware of a new law passed by the Legislature earlier this month.

The bill banning smoking on state beaches and in state parks passed without much fanfare or public debate. That might be because it was obscured by more contentious issues like same-sex marriage and the safety of cell phone use in cars, or it might just be that laws banning smoking – indoors and out – have become so commonplace smokers have resigned themselves to their fates.

That doesn’t mean everyone agrees with them, though.

“It’s outdoors,” said Hughes. “There should be a law about picking up your cigarette butts, but at this rate we should just stop making cigarettes altogether.”

Considering the amount of damage cigarettes do to our collective health and the environment, that might not be a bad idea. A world with fewer smokers and cigarette butts littering the parks, streets and beaches would be a happier, healthier place. Still, it’s not hard to see why smokers might feel like an endangered species.

The state’s done just about everything it can to limit smokers, from banning smoking in bars to cars with children, not to mention making cigarettes obscenely expensive. Even so, many smokers have held onto their habits.

The state already has a law demanding that people pick up their butts. Despite that, cigarette filters remain one of the most common forms of beach pollution, which is why the recent law was necessary.

The beauty of the beaches here is one of the things that attracts tourists. Although some Mainers might not mind if there were fewer tourists on the beach, summer visitors contribute a considerable amount of money to the state’s economy.

It’s not just tourists, though. Most people don’t like to run their toes or fingers into the sand and find a cigarette butt. It’s unsanitary and bad for the environment. The same carcinogens in the smoke are in the filters, many of which wind up getting washed into the ocean, where they can damage marine life and the quality of our water.

The butts that stay in the sand or on the ground in parks take years to break down, and some scientists have argued they never fully biodegrade.

Even with the new law, we can all expect to be unearthing them in the sand for years to come.

Brendan Moran, editor