Welcome to Thailand

Cigarette smoking is to be banned on 20 beaches across Thailand from November, according to a story in The Phuket Gazette.

The bans are being introduced in an attempt to clean up the beaches.

The Gazette story said that cigarette butts comprised the most numerous item found during beach clean-ups on Phuket Island, and that the litter problem created by butts went beyond Phuket.

Beaches around the kingdom had a huge cigarette-butt problem that was aggravated by the complaints of a few people who disliked being downwind of smokers, the paper said.

Unlike bottles and other some other garbage, cigarette butts were harder to see, partly because they were small and their colors tended to blend with the color of the sand.

So, Thai authorities are banning the butts by banning smoking.

The ban on smoking on 20 beaches will be backed by penalties that will entail violators being sent to prison for one year, being fined up to 100,000 Baht (US$3,000), or both.

The 20 beaches included in the ban are in Pattaya, Bangsaen, Cha-am, Hua Hin, Phuket, Samui, Phang Nga and Songkhla.

If the campaign is ‘successful’, more beaches will be included in the smoking ban.

The Gazette said that during a recent beach clean-up on Patong Beach, it was estimated that volunteer cleaners found an average of 100,000 cigarette butts per 2.5 km of beach.