Suck it up...As if smoking bans are to blame for the presence of cigarette butt litter. Smokers lead to butts in the streets (and bums in the streets, if the hordes of addicts standing in gutters outside pubs and restaurants sucking down their nicotine on a Friday night is anything to go by) . Even prior to the ban on smoking in pubs and nightclubs in Queensland I witnessed countless occasions where a smoker would finish their cigarette while standing mere metres from a bin- many with a dedicated ash tray- and throw it on the ground. At uni, at bus stops, in parks, outside workplaces- the places that smokers gather turn into a stinking ash-tray. Until it rains and washes the cigarette butts into the drains and eventually into the river.
What's needed is not more bins but more people to hand out fines for littering and smoking in 'smoke-free' zones. I read on a Queensland government website before the full ban came into effect that they have only 80 of these officers to police the whole of Queensland.
When Gam and I were last at Southbank some months ago we lined up to buy ice-cream at the New Zealand Natural store. We were waiting in line next to a pretty, fresh-faced girl, probably 10 years old. While we were in the queue I smelled cigarette smoke. That wouldn't be out of the ordinary at Southbank, except they had recently enacted smoking bans; there were 'no smoking' signs everywhere. I turned around, and standing at the tables behind us- tables with a big 'no smoking' sticker stuck right smack bang in the middle- was some crusty middle-aged guy mindlessly puffing away on a cigarette. The little girl paid for two ice-creams and trotted over to the smoker- he was her dad. He dropped his cigarette on the ground next to the table, ground it out with his thong, and they left. Another man lit up at the next table (similarly signed) as they were leaving.
We don't need people blaming 'the smoking bans' for the litter problem, absolving the smokers of the act of littering. They're adults, for christ's sake- have them take some responsibility for the problems they create.
Meanwhile, research just published in the Archives of Dermatology reveals that smoking doesn't just give you a saggy-baggy face and cat's-bum lips- it makes you saggy all over. Mmm, attractive thought!
3 comments:
I do not understand smokers. They have this mentality that it's not litter. It is. Put it in the fucking bin. If someone chucked a can in the street they'd likely think 'huh?' But because it's a cig butt then no.
Morons.
Yeah, and then you read in the paper on Clean Up Australia Day that a group of 7 year old school girls picked up 11 million cigarette butts or whatever. Nice going, having schoolgirls cleaning up after filthy litterers... Smokers who litter simply have no shame.
I really hate when they throw them out their car window - that's how you get bush fires. You see all those fires on median strips and beside the Ipswich motorway in Brisbane and i'm pretty sure 99% of them are from bloody cigarette butts!!!
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