You come over to my house, you love candy, the individually wrapped kind. You pull into my driveway and you have a wrapper in your hand. You get out of your car and you decide, you don’t want the trash in your car, so you figure it’s better in my driveway, so you throw the wrapper down on my driveway.
As you approach the door, you pop another candy into your mouth and yes, you’ve got that nasty wrapper again, not sure what to do because you don’t want to bring in the trash with you, so you toss it aside into the flowerbed.
As you are driving home, you pop another candy into your mouth and realizing again, you don’t want to dirty your car with this wrapper, so you decided the best solution is to throw it out the window. You do and to your amusement, you watch it hit the car behind you and bounce over the top of their car. No harm, they did not even notice.
Most of us, right away would say what the person doing above is wrong, it is littering, it is against the law. In fact, if we saw someone throwing trash out of their car, we might even report them. However, how did the cigarette smoker get exempt?
None of us would throw our candy wrapper into our neighbors yard, but smokers don’t have a second thought about leaving their cigarette butts wherever they are.
They throw them out of their car while driving, they throw them down on the ground when they get out of their car, they throw them down on the ground before the enter an establishment without ever a thought they are littering.
Here is a study I just found about smoking: A overwhelming number of smokers believe cigarette butts to be litter, yet it has not stopped them from doing it.
Do you consider cigarette butts to be litter? |
Number |
% |
N |
% |
|
|
No/DK |
138 |
13.8 |
27 |
2.7 |
81.39 |
0.00 |
Yes |
862 |
86.2 |
973 |
97.3 |
|
|
From <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3397372/table/ijerph-09-02189-t002/?report=objectonly>
I don’t understand how cigarettes got the windfall as ok to litter. Even though it is considered littering, it does not stop them, even from doing it right in front of you. It’s almost like they have the right. Hey, I am smoking, so I have the right to litter! Really, I am hungry, so I will throw the wrapper to my hamburger out my window when I am done with it. Hate to have that wrapper in my car.
The logic of throwing it out of the car just eludes me. The smoker spends a bunch of money on the cigarettes, the smoker lights it and smokes it in their car. They put all that tar and nicotine into their body, but for some reason cannot contain the trash of there delight until they get to a proper trash can?
Like drinking alcohol, this seems to be an accepted sin. With the seemingly anti smoking campaigns around, the smokers, I would think, would want to make this habit less intrusive by picking up after themselves. Maybe some do, regardless, too many still seem to believe someone else should pick up after they have spent the last few minutes poisoning and killing themselves, since they made such a sacrifice.
I am truly not upset or angry, just very confused about how this behavior is so accepted. God Bless!
I was a scoutmaster once. After a campout, I tried to teach the boys to make the campsite cleaner than when they got there. None of the boys or other adult leaders considered butts to be trash, so no one picked them up. The boys didn’t smoke, but they were supposed to pick up every bit of trash they saw. They fired me as scoutmaster a week later.
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Sorry, this took me so long. Yes, we are programmed it seems to accept cigarette butts as non-trash. Almost like we accept drunk driving. Plus, people think they are small and will disintegrate eventually or quickly. I don’t understand why they fired you – over cigarette butts or because you wanted them to pick them up? My sister smoked, I remember driving with her and she rolled down her window to throw out her butt, I could not believe it, I was disappointed. I hate being behind cars when they throw their butts out and it hits my car!!
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I hope that this bad habit will vanish all over the world.. Thanks for sharing!
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Maybe, but it just seems like it’s an education thing. And somehow, people don’t see it as littering. They throw down the butt right outside the doors of restaurants, businesses even their neighbors house.
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