Santa Monica has banned smoking on public beaches — presumably because the risk of developing cancer from second-hand beachsmoke is of enormous concern to oil-slathered sun worshippers browning themselves on teflon mats like lumpy West Coast taco meat.

“”It’s about health,’ said Mayor Pro Tem Kevin McKeown. “It’s time to clear the smoke.’

Los Angeles City Councilman Jack Weiss said at the [March 24 City Council] meeting that a committee for his council will hear a similar proposal April 6.

“We’re going to end up with this historic 13-mile stretch of coastline where smoking will not be permitted on the beach,’ said Weiss, who said he hoped twin bans across the two cities would send “shock waves’ through the state. “We’re going to start the process of changing peoples’ attitudes about where its acceptable to smoke.’

For those of you unfamiliar with disingenuous politico speak, “changing peoples’ attitudes” has nothing to do with actually changing peoples’ attitudes. Rather, it has to do with powerdrunk local officials forcing changes to behaviors they find objectionable, or supporting positions they find politically expedient. This is the nannystate exercising majoritarian tyranny over an unpopular minority (in CA, 17% of the population smoke) — when what it should be doing is exercising care over rapidly disappearing individual freedoms.

It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to wake one morning and find that some California “clean living” group — with the support of a handful of smiling elected lackeys — has filed a damages suit against the sun.