MARYLAND

Marijuana, cigars, vaping target of potential Ocean City smoking ordinance

The Daily Times

City Manager Doug Miller discusses potential changes to Ocean City's smoking ordinance with the town council during a work session on May 1, 2018.

The Ocean City Town Council looked at potential changes to one of its ordinances Tuesday aimed at deterring vaping and marijuana smoking in the resort town.

While the current smoking ordinance identifies both smoking and vaping as unlawful in several parts of Ocean City except in designated areas, the major change would be an expansion of the definition of what would be considered smoking.

Compared to the current definition for smoking, the new one would not only explicitly list marijuana as prohibited, but would also include a host of other products that could be used for smoking or vaping, such as a hookah pipe, cigar or electronic cigarette.

City Manager Doug Miller said during a Tuesday work session that the proposed changes are based on an ordinance on the books in a county in California and have come out of two issues of recent concern.

A man smokes an electronic cigarette April 23, 2014, in Chicago.

The first is that people who are cited under the town's smoking ordinance often try to argue that they were vaping rather than smoking a traditional tobacco product and that there is a difference between the two.

Because of the decriminalization of marijuana, he said there is also concern that a person smoking a tobacco product could potentially be fined "more stringently" under the town's current ordinance compared to a person caught smoking marijuana.

Council Member Matt James raised questions about why the ordinance needed to include an explicit list of prohibited products and whether the council might have to come back in the future and continue to add items as new trends emerge.

One of 153 designated smoking stations on the beach in Ocean City. Smokers who wish to smoke on the beach can do so only within 15 feet of these receptacles.

"A blanket no smoking or vaping seems a lot easier than listing things we don’t want them to do,” he said during the work session.

Miller said that by providing a detailed list within the ordinance officials hope that it could prevent individuals who are smoking or vaping from trying to get out of a citation.

The proposed changes to the town's smoking ordinance will be on the agenda for the council's Monday, May 7, regular meeting so that they can move forward to a formal first reading.