By Philip Sean Curran
SANDY HOOK – Visitors to Sandy Hook will no longer be able to smoke or drink alcohol on the beach based on new rules announced last week that put the federally run park in line with other beaches around the state.
Sandy Hook, a national park home to beaches, bike paths and other amenities, attracts about 2 million visitors each year. Drinking alcohol always had been allowed there, the last public beach in New Jersey to do so.
But from 2012 to 2016, 58 percent of the 919 arrests at Sandy Hook involved alcohol, National Park Service spokeswoman Daphne Yun said April 5. That statistic trended up in 2018, with 70 percent of the 67 arrests falling into that category, including 25 DWIs and 14 public intoxication arrests.
“It’s public safety,” she said when asked about the reason for the rule change. “It’s the fact that law enforcement in the summer at Sandy Hook has to deal mainly with alcohol-related incidents. And so their time is taken up. If we take that away, that makes everyone safer because then if there’s some kind of other issue, law enforcement can rapidly respond to that.”
She said that with the new rule, officials will give warnings. But repeat offenders could get a citation that carries a $50 fine for a first offense and a $100 fine for the second, she said.
As part of their public education campaign, officials will post signs at Sandy Hook and work with the ferry service that brings visitors from New York City to let their passengers know of the rule change before boarding the boat.
Officials will confiscate alcohol if they catch someone with it, Yun said.
In an email statement, Mothers Against Drunk Driving national president Helen Witty said, “While MADD does not take a position on where alcohol is sold or consumed – as long as those who buy it and consume it are at least 21 years old – we are concerned about the actions people take when they do choose to drink alcohol. We are grateful for any effort to address the drunk driving crisis that is still the deadliest threat on our roads, and we urge anyone whose plans include alcohol to always make a plan before they have the first drink.”
“Nationwide, this violent crime killed nearly 11,000 people in 2017,” she said. “In New Jersey, drunk driving claimed nearly 1,500 lives between 2008 and 2017, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Each one of these deaths was 100 percent preventable.”
People holding park service-issued permits, such as those having a wedding at the park’s chapel, are exempt from the no-alcohol rule, Yun said.
Smoking at Sandy Hook will be permitted in designated areas in the parking lots. She said the decision about smoking brings Sandy Hook “much more closely in line with the regulations at all the state and other public beaches throughout New Jersey and New York.”
In 2018, Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law a ban on smoking at all public beaches, a restriction that took effect this year. The environmental advocacy group Clean Ocean Action reported last week that during its cleanups of beaches and other areas around the state in 2018, it found 21,998 cigarette filters, 2,181 pieces of cigarette packaging and 7,437 cigar tips.
Reacting to the new smoking rule at Sandy Hook, which includes vaping, Mayor Rick O’Neil of nearby Highlands said he felt the restriction went “a little too far.”
“The beach is about as big a public open space as you can be on,” said O’Neil, a nonsmoker. “I just think it’s along the lines of restrictions of some kind of liberties.”
As for the larger ban on beach smoking that Murphy signed, O’Neil said his municipal police department is not large enough to enforce the law.
“Maybe the governor should send a (state) trooper down there to the beach to make sure nobody does that,” O’Neil said. “Everything comes from the top, but nobody wants to pay for anything.”
