Can You Vape on Grand Strand Beaches? Yes — Except at Surfside, Where Police Say They’ll Cite You for Violating Grand Strand beach vaping rules.
Vaping is legal on every public ocean beach on the Grand Strand as of July 27, 2026 — except Surfside Beach, where police say they will cite it under the Grand Strand beach vaping rules. Surfside Beach Police told MyrtleBeachSC.com the department will charge vaping on the beach the same as a cigarette. No other city, town or county on the Strand prohibits it, and no state park rule we could find does either.
Surfside never passed a vaping ban. The 2008 ordinance its officers enforce defines smoking as a lighted product and never mentions vapor. North Myrtle Beach did pass one, named e-cigarettes in the text, and set the effective date at January 1, 2027 [North Myrtle Beach Ordinance 26-15]. **The town enforcing a vaping ban this summer is not the town that passed one.**
Surfside Beach Will Cite You. Its Own Definition Says “Lighted.”
Surfside Beach has banned smoking on its beaches and public beach accesses since November 2008 [Town of Surfside Beach Code § 7-136]. The definition governing that ban is one sentence: smoking means “inhaling, exhaling, burning, or carrying any lighted cigar, cigarette, pipe, or other lighted tobacco product in any manner or in any form” [§ 7-132]. No heating, no vapor, no e-cigarettes, and no amendment since 2009. An e-cigarette produces no flame and burns no tobacco, so on the face of the ordinance the ban does not reach it.
The Surfside Beach Police Department does not read it that way.** MyrtleBeachSC.com contacted the department, which said it will charge someone for vaping on the beach the same as it would for smoking a cigarette. We asked which section of the code a vaping citation would issue under and have not received an answer.
Understanding the Grand Strand Beach Vaping Rules
Understanding the Grand Strand beach vaping rules is essential for beachgoers.
The practical answer at Surfside today is that you can be ticketed, and the penalty is the cigarette penalty: a civil infraction of $10 to $25, with an express clause that violators are not subject to incarceration [§ 7-143]. Nothing in the code sets a different penalty for a vape. The town’s own mayor asked the state Attorney General in 2008 whether it could ban beach smoking; the opinion said yes, but the violation had to be civil, not criminal, because outdoor smoking is not illegal under state law [S.C. Attorney General, 2008]. Attorney General opinions advise; they do not bind a court.
The town already has a definition of smoking that covers vaping: its July 2025 zoning rules for smoke shops define a vapor product as non-combustible and define smoking to include carrying or inhaling one [Surfside Beach Ordinance 25-0989]. It left the 2008 definition standing over the beach. **The modern definition decides where a vape shop can open; the 2008 one governs the sand.**
Nobody appears to have tested it. We do not know whether the town has ever written a vaping citation, and no court has construed § 7-132 against a vapor product — the text a cited person would point at.
North Myrtle Beach Wrote E-Cigarettes Into Its Law. It Starts January 1, 2027.
Council approved Ordinance 26-15 on second reading 7-0 on May 4, 2026, and Section 4 sets the effective date at January 1, 2027. **Until that date nothing in North Myrtle Beach prohibits vaping on the beach.** It covers the public beach and its access points, and the penalty is a $100 infraction — Ordinance 26-15 left the article’s existing penalty section untouched [North Myrtle Beach Code § 12-85.2].
Parking lots are not in the enacted text. At the April 6 first reading, according to the approved minutes, City Manager Ryan Fabbri told council the ordinance included the public beach accesses, walkways and public parking lots so that smokers would not congregate in choke points. The minutes are the clerk’s summary rather than a transcript, and the ordinance text available publicly is the version in the May 4 agenda packet, dated April 24 — three weeks after that meeting. What council enacted does not reach parking lots.
The ordinance does not say who writes the ticket. It assigns enforcement to “the city manager or an authorized designee” and was never amended to name Beach Patrol [North Myrtle Beach Code § 12-85.1]. Mayor J.O. Baldwin III said in April that enforcement would likely be complaint-driven and in May that Beach Patrol would monitor compliance, the minutes record. The city must also post “No Smoking” signs [§ 12-86], and council has been given no sign count and no cost.
Atlantic Beach Said Nothing, and Becomes the Hole in the Ban
Atlantic Beach publishes no codified book of ordinances — only individual PDFs. MyrtleBeachSC.com read all 63 posted since 2020, then read the town’s entire criminal offenses code, a 33-page ordinance adopted March 2, 2026 [Atlantic Beach Ordinance 3-2026]. That code is not indifferent to the beach: it bans camping on the sand, open containers and panhandling on the beach, and dogs on the public beaches on summer afternoons.
It says nothing about cigarettes and nothing about vapes, four weeks before North Myrtle Beach gave its ban a first reading. **No Atlantic Beach ordinance found after an exhaustive search of the posted record prohibits smoking or vaping on the town’s beach.** With no codified code, and numbering gaps in the town’s posted list including five missing 2026 numbers, an older unposted ordinance cannot be excluded.
The silence has a consequence. Ordinance 26-15 operates only inside North Myrtle Beach, and Atlantic Beach is a separate municipality with its own oceanfront, surrounded on its landward sides by its neighbor. Unless the town acts, on January 1, 2027 its oceanfront becomes the one gap in an otherwise continuous banned shoreline — the one stretch where lighting a cigarette or using a vape stays legal.
Everywhere Else: No Rule Found, and No State Law Filling the Gap
The City of Myrtle Beach has no smoking or vaping prohibition on its beach, Boardwalk, piers or public parks [Myrtle Beach Code, Ch. 5]. Neither does unincorporated Horry County, which includes Garden City Beach [Horry County Code, Ch. 5]. Nor does Georgetown County, Pawleys Island or Briarcliffe Acres — and Litchfield and Huntington Beach State Park are Georgetown County, not Horry.
Every “no rule” finding here rests on a full-text search of the jurisdiction’s own codified ordinances, which carry the codifier’s currency dates: April 2025 for Myrtle Beach, December 2025 for Horry County, September 2025 for Georgetown County, July 2025 for Pawleys Island and October 2022 for Briarcliffe Acres. An ordinance adopted after those dates would not yet appear in the published code.
Both state parks come back the same way. Neither the state park statute nor the parks’ published rules prohibit it, and the agency’s only regulations — Chapter 133 of the South Carolina Code of Regulations — are a grant-program manual with no visitor-conduct rules at all [S.C. Code § 51-3-145].
One state parks smoking rule does exist, and its scope is the point: smoking is “strictly prohibited in all South Carolina State Park facilities including lodges, cabins, and villas,” the agency’s reservation site states. **That is a facilities rule — an agency that knows how to ban smoking confined the ban to the inside of buildings.** The park system has published no position on smoking or vaping at either park beach, and because a posted restriction would appear in no statute and no regulation, a sign at a park beach access is the one thing this answer cannot rule out.
South Carolina’s only smoking law is an indoor law that never mentions e-cigarettes [S.C. Code § 44-95-20]. A 2023 act barred local rules on vape ingredients, flavors and sales licensing, then expressly preserved local authority over “public-use policies” for the same products [S.C. Code § 44-95-45]. A beach vaping ban is a public-use policy: nothing in the state’s preemption statute reaches it, and no court has held otherwise.
The Litter Law Is the Only Rule That Binds Every Beach Today
South Carolina’s litter statute does the work no beach smoking ordinance does: it makes discarding litter a misdemeanor and names cigarette butts and beaches specifically [S.C. Code § 16-11-700]. For the smallest tier, 15 pounds or less, the penalty is a fine of $25 to $100 or up to 30 days, plus a mandatory eight hours of litter-gathering labor.
Dropping a spent pod on the sand is a criminal offense carrying a possible jail term. Using that same device on that same sand in North Myrtle Beach after January 1 is a $100 city infraction with no jail. **South Carolina’s litter law is harsher than the Grand Strand’s first beach vaping ban.**
This answer is about where adults may vape. It is not about who may buy or possess these products: federal law sets the minimum age at 21 and retailers must follow it, while South Carolina’s own statute still says 18.
What Changes on January 1
On January 1, 2027, the North Myrtle Beach public beach becomes the first stretch of Grand Strand sand where an ordinance that names e-cigarettes carries a fine. The ordinance is not yet visible in the city’s published online code.
Four questions are open before the date arrives: whether Surfside amends the 2008 definition to match what its officers say it means; how many vaping citations the town has written; who writes the citation in North Myrtle Beach; and whether the required signs will say “vaping” as well as “smoking,” and what they cost. We will keep asking all four.
*This article describes the ordinances, statutes and published rules in force on July 27, 2026, as each government publishes them. It is not legal advice. A council can change any of this at a single meeting, and on public land a posted sign can carry the force of law — if you are unsure, ask the town.*
Further Reading
Grand Strand beach vaping rules – [City of North Myrtle Beach, Ordinance 26-15 agenda packet, May 4, 2026](https://www.nmb.us/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/1395?fileID=4519)
Grand Strand beach vaping rules – [North Myrtle Beach City Council minutes, May 4, 2026](https://www.nmb.us/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Minutes/_05042026-534)
Grand Strand beach vaping rules – [North Myrtle Beach City Council minutes, April 6, 2026](https://www.nmb.us/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/1392?fileID=4505)
Grand Strand beach vaping rules – [North Myrtle Beach Code, Ch. 12, Art. VI — Smoking in Public Places](https://library.municode.com/sc/north_myrtle_beach/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=COOR_CH12HESA)
Grand Strand beach vaping rules – [Town of Surfside Beach Code of Ordinances](https://library.municode.com/sc/surfside_beach/codes/code_of_ordinances)
Grand Strand beach vaping rules – [Town of Surfside Beach, Ordinance 25-0989 — smoke shop and vapor product zoning](https://www.surfsidebeach.org/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Item/1432?fileID=6513)
Grand Strand beach vaping rules – [Town of Surfside Beach, Rules & Laws of Beach Use](https://www.surfsidebeach.org/203/Rules-Laws-of-Beach-Use)
Grand Strand beach vaping rules – [City of Myrtle Beach Code, Ch. 5 — Beach and Boating Regulations](https://library.municode.com/sc/myrtle_beach/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=COOR_CH5BEBORE)
Grand Strand beach vaping rules – [City of Myrtle Beach, published beach rules](https://www.cityofmyrtlebeach.com/news_detail_T6_R462.php)
Grand Strand beach vaping rules – [Horry County Code, Ch. 5 — Beaches](https://library.municode.com/sc/horry_county/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=COOR_CH5BE)
Grand Strand beach vaping rules – [Horry County, About Our Beaches](https://www.horrycountysc.gov/about-our-beaches)
Grand Strand beach vaping rules – [Georgetown County Code of Ordinances](https://library.municode.com/sc/georgetown_county/codes/code_of_ordinances)
– [Town of Pawleys Island Code of Ordinances](https://library.municode.com/sc/pawleys_island/codes/code_of_ordinances)
– [Town of Briarcliffe Acres Code of Ordinances](https://library.municode.com/sc/briarcliffe_acres/codes/code_of_ordinances)
– [Town of Atlantic Beach, SC — Ordinances index](https://www.townofatlanticbeachsc.com/page/Ordinance)
– [Town of Atlantic Beach, Ordinance No. 3-2026 — criminal offenses code, adopted March 2, 2026](https://www.townofatlanticbeachsc.com/page/open/2699/0/Ordiance%20No%20three%20dash%20twenty%20six.pdf)
– [S.C. Code § 16-11-700 — litter (Title 16, Ch. 11)](https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t16c011.php)
– [S.C. Code Title 44, Ch. 95 — Clean Indoor Air Act, incl. § 44-95-45 preemption](https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t44c095.php)
– [S.C. Code Title 16, Ch. 17 — incl. § 16-17-501 electronic smoking devices](https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t16c017.php)
– [S.C. Code Title 51, Ch. 3 — State Parks, incl. § 51-3-145](https://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t51c003.php)
– [S.C. Code of Regulations, Chapter 133 — Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism](https://www.scstatehouse.gov/coderegs/Chapter%20133.pdf)
– [South Carolina State Parks, Rules & Regulations](https://southcarolinaparks.com/rules-regulations)
– [South Carolina State Parks reservations, Myrtle Beach cabins — facilities smoking policy](https://reserve.southcarolinaparks.com/myrtle-beach/cabins/)
– [S.C. Attorney General opinion to Mayor K. Allen Deaton, Town of Surfside Beach, Oct. 8, 2008](https://www.scag.gov/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/deaton-k-a-os-8654-10-08-08-banning-smoking-on-a-beach.pdf)
– [The Foothills Brewing Concern, Inc. v. City of Greenville, Op. No. 26467 (S.C. 2008)](https://www.sccourts.org/media/opinions/HTMLFiles/SC/26467.htm)
Grand Strand beach vaping rules – [2023–2024 S.C. Bill 3681 — Omnibus Tobacco Enforcement Act of 2023](https://www.scstatehouse.gov/sess125_2023-2024/bills/3681.htm)
