Way to be a smarty pants. He was talking average clown cars.
Packs or Cartons? That’s like 8400 cigarettes!
How long can one keep cigarettes? Don’t they get stale?
You certainly weren’t an asshole. I can understand the foodbank not accepting them, but they could have been nicer about it.
The tax stamp is what you need to worry about if you consider selling them. The aforementioned VFW or American legion might be good places to donate them. You might even get a tax write off for the donation.
Try giving them away at the local elementary school from the back of a van. The kids will think you’re cool. It’s a win-win situation with no possible downside!
42 packs is three grocery sacks. 42 *cartons *is a hell of a lot more than that.
42 packs is only a hair over 4 cartons. That would fit in a decent size glove compartment.
Def. not an asshole of any sort. But…
[voice lowers nervously]
I… um…
I think you should throw them away, after rendering them unusable somehow.
(I’m really the only one?)
[voice normalizes]
I’m not saying this with the attitude of the person you spoke to at the food bank. Just telling you what I think is the ideal act here.
And I think it’s really weird that I think the next best thing is to sell them, and that somehow that’s better, in some moral sense, than simply giving them away. I can’t figure me out on this one.
What have you been smoking? The dimensions of a pack of king-size cigarettes are approx. 1 13/16" x 2 1/4" x 3 1/2". A carton would be about 1 7/8" x 3 1/2" x 11 1/4", or about 74 cubic inches. A standard grocery sack measures 7" x 12" x 17", with a capacity of over 1400 cubic inches. Do the math.
Ten times as much as 42 packs certainly, but certainly not more than three sacks. 14 cartons (1036 cubic inches) would easily fit into one sack, and thus 42 into three sacks.
Call a homeless shelter instead of a food bank.
42? The answer really was 42?
Also, what was Am I An Asshole, Part I?
It was related to Leonard Part 5.
Typo. That first figure should be 13/16, not 1 13/16. Sorry.
I don’t think your idea marks you as a horrible person. However, if someone is so addicted to cigarettes that they are shortchanging their own nutrition, I don’t think it’s ethical to enable their habit.
Let’s pretend your 42 cartons of cigarettes are 42 bottles of vodka. Both are legal substances, both can lead to adverse health effects when used in excess, and both are addictive in at least some segment of the population. Would it strike you as weird to see a food pantry giving away vodka?
I vote for either throwing them away (that’s a win-win for everyone as far as public health is concerned). The next best option is to sell the cigarettes to people who at least can support their habit without sacrificing basic life necessities. At least then you can re-coup your costs from buying them in the first place, and you’re not “gifting” someone something that you yourself have rejected from your lifestyle (possibly because of health reasons?).
While the ideal solution is that everyone quit smoking, making this question mute, I’m looking at the reality of the situation. Most of the people I know who smoke have no real plans of quitting. Smoking is probably slowly deteriorating their health, but they still can normally function on a day to day basis (except for the excessive smoking breaks and the smell). In most cases, you’d just be saving someone a few bucks, because in all seriousness, they’re going to smoke regardless of what you do.
Vodka, on the other hand, does affect someone’s abilty to function on a daily basis. In fact, some of the people using these food banks might be in their current situation due to vodka, but probably not cigarettes. It’s an apples/oranges type of thing.
That said, I would not try to dissuade the OP should he/she decide to destroy them.
AHAHAHA the food bank lady reminds me of that black woman on the Seinfield episode when George tried to donate the book he read in the bathroom at the book store…
Just toss em to every dude on the street you run into. Many homeless use them as appetite supressants. I also like the VFW idea… just don’t go to a Vet hospital. Nothing more depressing than seeing the vets smoke with their oxygen tanks…
While I see your point, I disagree that this is an apples/oranges thing. Just because cigarette smokers are only slowing hurting themselves and are reasonably functional doesn’t mean providing them with cigarettes is truly a helpful gesture. These people are going to a food pantry, so having money to buy food (at least at that moment) is not an issue. Also, it’s not like the money they’d supposedly be saving by receiving a couple of free packs is so much that it’ll lift them out of poverty.
If the OP recognizes cigarette smoking as a habit worth kicking for himself, it makes little ethical sense for him to facilitate (even in a miniscule way) the habit in other people.
I think you’re wonderful. I wish everyone was exactly like you.
I don’t think you were being an asshole, but trying to give non-food items to the food bank strikes me as a little strange.
I vote not an asshole. I know the VFW post I belong to would snap them right up and give you a reciept as a “donation”. Nothing makes an old vet smile like a free anything.
I think they might take diapers and things like that. Many food banks now take pet food, too.
Have some fun with them! If you are going to give them away, make up some long text about a treasure, draw a big treasure map on the computer, print the long text and the map on tiny labels (so that only part of the treasure description or part of the map appears on any one label), number the labels “1 of 80, 2 of 80, etc.” and put a single label on each cigarette pack. Then the person getting a cigarette pack will try and find other people to put together the map or the text, it will give them a new hobby.
Make it sound like a publicity campaign for a movie or a book, so people believe it (pirate treasure is more fun but most people will be skeptical).