BY DARRELL HALEN

Beth Lippold doesn’t like being exposed to cigarette smoke while relaxing at Windham’s town beach.
It bothers her. It bothers her kids.

“You definitely smell it when someone lights up,” said Lippold, who has four children. “It’s not a big beach.”

Lippold, a member of the town’s Recreation Committee, would like to see smoking banned from the beach. If that doesn’t happen, she wants smoking limited to designated areas.

“I don’t want to be exposed to it,” said Lippold who saw her mother, a longtime smoker, succumb to emphysema six years ago. “I don’t want my children exposed to it.”

She’s not alone.

Cheryl Haas, the town’s recreation coordinator, said she has received complaints from several parents who don’t like smoking at the beach.

There are other concerns besides secondhand smoke: children picking up cigarette butts and putting them into sand castles, and fears a child could be accidentally burned by a lit cigarette.

Haas said she approached selectmen with the idea of limiting smoking at the beach to designated areas. A couple of them, she said, favor banning it.
Currently, Windham has a policy that prohibits smoking in town facilities except for designated smoking areas.

Selectmen will hold a public hearing, as part of their Monday, May 14, meeting to consider whether to broaden that policy to the town beach, parks and other lands.

They want residents to weigh in on the issue.

John Thorndike, a Windham smoker who uses the beach, said he gets aggravated seeing smokers put out their cigarettes in the sand. There are no containers to dispose of them at the beach.

But he doesn’t favor a ban or designated areas.

“It’s not really the New Hampshire way,” he said. “That’s more of a Massachusetts thing.”

Beverly Tierney drives from Londonderry to use Griffin Park. She doesn’t see many cigarette butts or people smoking at the park, and doesn’t think a ban or designated areas are necessary.

“They don’t need to have a smoking area,” she said.

Her 11-year-old granddaughter disagrees, saying people at the park are working out and shouldn’t have to inhale cigarette smoke.

Some people, like Gayle Conroy, a Windham nonsmoker, likes the idea of a smoking ban at the park.

So does Chris Tsourides, who moved to town last October with his wife and 1-year-old daughter.

“I don’t think it would bother us if it were banned,” he said.

Roberta Mullett of Londonderry said she would like to see smoking restricted to designated areas.

People shouldn’t be allowed to smoke near the skateboard park.

Her 11-year-old daughter and her friend don’t want to walk by smokers to enter it.

“Why should children have to suffer from secondhand smoke?” she said, while sitting on a bench near the skateboard area. “She should be able to go from here to there while breathing fresh air.”

Mullett said she’s seen people smoking in the skate park, despite a rule prohibiting tobacco products there.

Eric Marquebreauck, who was smoking a cigarette while recently flying a kite at the park, said he doesn’t think designated areas or a ban at the park would work.

“Smoking ban? I doubt it. People will still light up,” he said. “People are going to do what they want to do.”

Phil Guay, 21, a Derry skateboarder who smokes, said he doesn’t think a smoking ban is necessary at the park.

“This place is huge,” he said. “I can’t see it bothering too many people.”

“Designated areas would be legit,” he added. “It would be a pain ... but we’d still get to do it.”

His friend, Mark Durso, 21, of Derry, said curtailing smoking outside the skateboard park is trampling on smokers’ rights.

If it’s curtailed, he said, it should be done with designated areas, not a ban. 

If smoking is completely banned, Durso said, he’ll still come to the park and light up.