Banning smoking in parks and beaches appears to be such a hot issue that Mayor Bloomberg decided yesterday that it might be best to hand off the issue to his health commissioner.

Instead of saying at a press conference whether he supports a ban, the mayor turned to Dr. Tom Farley and said, “Tom, you want to say something?”

Farley said, “There’s a lot of options we want to be looking at as far as to reduce the smoking rate, and that’s one we need to look at.”

But the mayor still wouldn’t say whether he plans to implement such a ban.