You’re sunbathing on a large Betty Boop towel on Coeur d’Alene’s City Beach when it happens.

While enjoying Brook’s seaplane landing with another load of tourists and the squeals of your children splashing in the water, you sniff a vapor of smoke. The culprit sits a few yards away, puffing his cigarette, oblivious to the families with young children around him. As of now, he has the right to annoy other sun worshippers with his annoying habit. But you want to confront him anyway.

You want to tell him about the danger he poses to your children from second-hand smoke. You want to tell him that he’s a fool for lighting up. You want someone to make him stop. You’re helpless. Rather than risk an angry retort, you don’t say anything. Or you move your blanket, cooler and children away from the social misfit, making a mental note to see someone about banning smoking on the beach.

Now, there’s a push to do just that, launched by city lifeguards who daily are forced to sit and watch smokers foul the air near children and then snuff out their cigarette butts in the sand around them. This issue, however, isn’t as cut-and-dried as it seems. Before you call Coeur d’Alene City Council members to lobby for a ban on beach smoking, you should count the cost, beginning with enforcement.

Is this matter important enough to assign police officers to patrol the beach in search of violators? Or should teenage lifeguards be given the authority to order other teens and even adults off the beach for lighting up? If the city asks lifeguards to monitor the ban, will it be compromising their No. 1 task – keeping an eye out for swimmers in trouble?

And there are more questions.

Why stop a ban on smoking at the seawall? Shouldn’t a ban also extend to the Fort Sherman Playground area in adjacent City Park, too? In fact, shouldn’t a ban cover nearby beaches along North Idaho College and East Lakeshore Drive, too – and any public greenbelt areas along the waterfront where children can be found? If we had our way, smoking would be banned altogether. Short of that, however, the Coeur d’Alene Parks and Recreation Commission and the City Council have to be practical when they consider this issue.

One pragmatic approach to the problem would be to enforce laws already on the books.

A smoker might think twice about “chillin’ ” with friends on the beach with a cigarette in his mouth if he’s cited for littering when he pushes the butt into the sand and leaves it. The mine field of butts dotting the beach front is just as annoying as second-hand smoke and makes a statement about the personal hygiene of individuals addicted to nicotine.

We sympathize with the crusade by Emily Christensen and other lifeguards who are exposed to second-hand smoke every day throughout the summer. If the city opts not to impose a ban, it should rope off an area and provide enough ash and butt receptacles to push smokers as far away as possible from the lifeguard stations. Of course, that would raise another question. Who would be responsible for keeping smokers penned up?