MEDWAY – Keep your smoke and cigarette butts out of the way.

That was the message Monday night after a unanimous selectmen’s vote to prevent smokers from puffing within 15 feet of any municipally owned building.

The new ban will apply to the town’s nine employees, as well as anyone who visits the town office, the highway garage and fire station, the transfer station or the recreation building.

The vote came after a discussion last week prompted by Selectman John Farrington, who found cigarette butts on the ground outside of the town’s highway garage. The original proposal during last week’s meeting was for a distance of 30 feet for only the town garage and fire station, but selectmen decided to reduce the distance and include all municipal buildings, according to the selectmen’s chairman, Bruce Jones.

The ban was meant to keep secondhand smoke from filtering back into the buildings, as well as prevent people from smoking in front of building doors, Jones said.

It’s hoped that the ban also will help curb people’s habit of tossing butts on the ground, he said.

“If anybody’s going to smoke, they should have the common courtesy to pick up after themselves,” Jones said Tuesday. “Littering is littering.”

Administrative Assistant Kathy Lee said enforcement of the new ban might prove difficult at the town office as she doesn’t expect to be constantly monitoring for smokers.

Jones said it may take awhile for people to get accustomed to the ban, but it has been his experience that people are becoming more considerate when it comes to smoking.