Delaware County, PA Public Conduct: Outdoor Smoking Restrictions (2026)

Section 141-3T authorizes the Delaware County Parks and Recreation Board to designate areas of the parks where smoking, including e-cigarettes and vaping devices, is prohibited. The provision is discretionary rather than a blanket ban: it is the Parks Board, not the general park-use rules, that decides which areas within a given park, if any, become no-smoking zones, and the chapter does not itself list which parks or areas currently carry that designation. This differs from Delaware County's older Chapter 173 smoking ordinance, which bans smoking outright on buses, trolleys and light-rail vehicles countywide under §173-1, and from the county's Article II civil-violation rule in the same chapter barring marijuana possession or smoking in any public space.

Chapter 141's smoking-zone authority instead sits among the section's other discretionary, area-specific rules, such as §141-3Q's limits on sledding and skating to designated spots and §141-3J's confinement of golf to designated areas, reflecting the same drafting pattern of channeling an activity into department- or board-approved zones rather than prohibiting it across every county park. Chapter 141 was readopted in its entirety on February 1, 2023 by Ord. No. 2023-2, and the smoking-zone clause is part of that 2023 rewrite; any zone the Parks Board designates is enforced the same way as the rest of §141-3's conduct rules, through county park police.