Jodi and Dennis Szymanski have been traveling from their Michigan home to Gulf Shores every winter for the past seven years.

And during those years, the so-called “snow birds” who travel to coastal Alabama for warmer winters, noticed something that would make city leaders grin: The beaches, and their adjoining parks, are as clean as they can ever recall.

They were happy to learn that the city, last June, approved an ordinance banning smoking and tobacco use at the popular Gulf Shores Public Beach. It’s the first known smoking ban on an Alabama beach, and encompasses about a ½-mile area where Gulf Shores city officials are completing a nearly $15 million renovation project to an area it calls Gulf Place.

“They do a good job making this beach beautiful and if they want to keep it beautiful, the best way to do that is to keep the butts off the beach and the sidewalk,” said Jodi Szymanski.

Her comments come as business owners and residents absorb recently reported news about the smoking ban.

The ban is occurring at the same time that other states and cities are looking to keep smokers off the beaches. In Florida, for instance, a state lawmaker is proposing legislation pushing for a smoking ban at all of the state’s beaches. New Jersey is implementing its own ban this month.

The Gulf Shores Public Beach ban took effect when the City Council adopted a wide-ranging ordinance in June. Signage is expected to be posted in the coming months informing visitors about the new policies.

The ban, as written, also applies to e-cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco.

The ban encompasses a territory that includes everything south of Alabama State Route 182 (Beach Boulevard) from around West Second Street to East 1st Avenue or near Hooter’s restaurant. Orange Beach city officials are not considering a similar smoking ban on its beaches, and neither are officials in Dauphin Island.

George Smith, a Gulf Shores resident for the past four years who was smoking a cigarette on the boardwalk adjacent to the Public Beach, said he doesn’t think people will not smoke when walking onto the beach.

As he sat on a boardwalk bench reading a book, a group of four visitors meandered onto the beach with lit cigarettes in hand. Smoking anywhere within the vicinity is off-limits.

“I think people are still going to smoke here on the beach,” said Smith. “If they would just put ash trays on the boardwalk, that would fix their problem. Most of the people I know who live here want to keep the beach clean.”

Some business owners aren’t sure a city-enforced ban is the right way to go.

Sanford McLain, owner of OB Vapors in Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, said he doesn’t support the smoking ban. An ex-smoker whose business is assisting smokers quit, McLain said he doesn’t think the city should be implementing ordinances that confine smokers into a segregated area.

Grant Brown, spokesman with the city of Gulf Shores, said there are no immediate plans to section of a smoking area within the Public Beach area.

“The beach is a big open area and I don’t see why it would be so hard,” said McLain.

Ike Willliams, owner of the family-owned Ike’s Beach Service – a beach rental business in Gulf Shores which also specializes in beach cleaning – said he believes the ban will help in keeping the beaches clean. He said as beaches get more crowded, especially during peak summer months, cigarette smoke can become a nuisance.

He doesn’t think people will not come to Gulf Shores because there is a smoking ban at the Public Beach. But he wondered aloud if restrictions are warranted.

“People are drowning, do we make them wear a life jacket when they are on the beach?” said Williams, who added that the smoking ban “doesn’t bother me.”

“The people who are fussing need to get involved,” he said, referring to people citing recent concerns about the ordinance. “When they hear these things coming up, they need to voice their concerns.”

Spencer Ryan, executive director of Alabama People Against a Littered State, or APALS, organizes a coastal cleanup encompassing Mobile and Baldwin counties each year, and the September coastal cleanup is one of the group’s biggest that involves 5,500 people who pick up around 4,800 tons of trash.

Cigarette butts, he said, are among the most difficult and abundant items the crew gathers.

“They are a huge problem,” said Ryan.

But the cities of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach oversee the “Leave Only Footprints” campaign that advocates against litter on the coastal beaches. And each night, after beaches are emptied during peak summer months, work crews rake the beach and pick up litter including cigarette butts.

Dennis and Jodi Szymanski have noticed a difference that seven years makes in cleaning up the area.

“When we first came down here seven years ago, I think they were still picking up from the oil spill,” said Dennis Szymanski, referring to the polluted beaches following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico which inundated coastal Alabama’s beaches with oil.

Said wife, Jodi, “We’ve noticed how clean it is. The reason we come down to this beach is because it’s beautiful.”