SCARBOROUGH – Smokers can breathe a sigh of relief – a ban on tobacco at town-owned beaches in Scarborough is on hold.

The Town Council voted 4-3 last week to table the proposed ordinance. Councilors Karen D’Andrea, who supports the ban, Mike Wood and Carol Rancourt voted against tabling the measure, opting to address whether the ordinance was appropriate for the town.

“I didn’t want to table it,” D’Andrea said. “I was disappointed the vote went that way.”

Now that the issue is tabled, she said, it will either have to be brought up and killed as an ordinance or addressed as a resolution, which, D’Andrea said, “does not have the weight of the law behind it.”

The ordinance, if passed, would have barred smoking, or the use of other tobacco products such as chew tobacco, within 25 feet of town beaches, unless done in a designated smoking area. The penalty for being caught using tobacco products would have been $50.

In the past, councilors have aired their concerns about how to enforce the ordinance, worrying that it would put undue pressure on the local police to enforce the issue.

“I support this ordinance. I think it is a good idea, but my concern is, how do you enforce it,” Councilor Ron Ahlquist, a park ranger at Crescent State Park, where tobacco use is prohibited, told the board last month.

“We still have people trying to smoke [in state parks] and get away with it,” he said at the March Town Council meeting, “I am real hesitant passing something we can’t enforce.”

That concern was brought up again last week at the council’s April 6 meeting.

D’Andrea said this week that she does not worry about how to enforce it.

“I do not believe enforcement is an issue,” she said. “Some 99.9 percent of people, through education in some way, will abide by it.”

Passing a resolution, she said, would not be as effective.

“To have the weight of an ordinance, it makes people know we mean business and we are really out there to protect the health of our children,” D’Andrea said.

The health impact of breathing second-hand smoke was just one of the reasons many citizens have spoken in favor of the ordinance over the last few months as the council has deliberated on it.

It is noted that cigarette butts are the leading cause of trash on beaches. During beach cleanup at Pine Point Beach last summer led by Scarborough resident Peter Slovinsky, close to 1,000 cigarette butts were collected on a one-mile stretch of beach around Hurd Park.

D’Andrea said she doesn’t feel the fight to ban tobacco use on beaches is over.

“My feeling is the public is energized right now to try to change the council’s mind in bringing this back as an ordinance,” she said.

Council Chairwoman Judy Roy said the topic will come up again at the council’s next meeting on April 20.