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Puffers In A Huff Protest New Smoking Laws

Fuming over the new parks smoking cigarettes ban, a cigarette-puffing crowd protested Saturday by lighting up along the Coney Island Boardwalk.

No Park Police came into sight during the hour-and-a-half exercise in civil disobedience led by Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment, or CLASH.

Along the section of beach near Brighton Sixth St., Howard Yourow called the ban illegal and unconstitutional, as he carefully cut the tip of a Dominican "Punch" cigar.

"Here we are, the great outdoors, the beach and the huge sky," he said, barefoot and wearing a pin that read "I smoke cigarettes and I vote."

"For them to ban smoking cigarettes in the great outdoors is an overreach of power," Yourow said.

He then stuffed a pipe, a cigar and a cigarette into his mouth - all at once.

The City Council voted in February to prohibit smoking cigarettes in pedestrian plazas, 1,700 city parks and playgrounds, along with 14 miles of public beaches. The newest ban went into effect this week.

Violators face $50 fines. Parks Department enforcement officers, not the NYPD, are in charge of issuing the tickets.

A Daily News staffer got the first ticket on Friday, but only after six hours of wandering the High Line and the Coney Island beach with cigarettes.

"Park Enforcement officers ... do have the ability to issue summonses to those who do not comply with the parks rules, and when possible will educate and advise before taking further action when overseeing compliance," a Parks spokesperson said.

CLASH founder Audrey Silk has been huffing and puffing about smoking cigarettes bans since then-Gov. George Pataki's 1999 cigarette tax hike.

"[Politicians] have preferred to rescind our civil liberties rather than advise the public to walk away," she said. "What a tyranny we're living under that they make these decisions on a whim? We smoked before the ban, we're going to smoke cigarettes after the ban."

Jack Kovalev, 21, agreed that people should be able to smoke: "Everyone's stressed out in this city," he said. "Cigarettes take that stress off."

But Galina Turalina, 21, was appalled.

"I'm shocked!" the visitor from Philadelphia said. "It's embarrassing. I've never seen a group of people gathering in favor of smoking cigarettes. Is this what we're teaching our children?"

Ten-year-old Gabriela Centeno of Brighton Beach, echoed that sentiment. The Public School 253 student thinks the ban is healthy for the future of New York.

"I think it's a good choice because there can be secondhand smoke cigarettes and people can get asthma, lung cancer and get sick," she said, while walking along the beach with her grandmother and baby brother.

Then there's Yakov Elperin, 67, of Brighton Beach. He doesn't smoke, but he believes people should have the right.

"We're opposed to people smoking cigarettes inside," he said on behalf of himself and his wife, Polina, who nodded in agreement. "But on the Boardwalk and the beach? Come on, it's a free country."

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