Introduction:
Cigarette butts are the most frequent litter on beaches worldwide. Many countries decided to ban smoking on the beach, introducing fines (e.g., in Spain, fines range from 750€+, including a ban on electronic cigarettes). In Italy, however, the smoking ban on the beaches remains at the discretion of the individual municipalities. As a part of tobacco control activities run by the Italian Society of Tobaccology (SITAB), we developed an online survey to study smoking attitudes and beliefs on the Italian beaches during the summer.

Material and Methods:
The survey, developed on Google Forms, was first shared on Rimini beaches during an anti-smoking activity by SITAB on July 19th, 2024, and then shared through social media. The 15 questions collect socio-demographic data, smoking habits, and agreement with the smoking ban on the beaches, as well as smoking limitations proposals.

Results:
Three hundred sixty-nine people answered (61.8% female), with a mean age of 52 (min 18, max 88). 33.9% were smokers, smoking a mean of 9 cigarettes/day. 87.5% of the respondents reported smelling smoke at the beach, 34.4% smelt it around three times/day, and 84.3% were bothered by it. 34.1% move away when smoke is around. 76.2% feel health damage because of second-hand smoke at the beach. 93% believe that limiting beach smoking could be a valuable policy for health (74.1% of which were smokers): restricted smoking areas (48.0%) or an absolute smoking ban (38.5%) were the two main options.

Conclusions:
These preliminary results show the importance of limiting smoke at the beach for human and environmental health protection. This is considered, and advocating for a strict smoking law in outdoor places is mandatory. The next step is clinical research to study health symptoms related to beach smoking.