The World Is My Ashtray

The BBQ Pit
21

In the thread, cigarette assholes, many smokers defended their littering.

Most of the smokers I know do casually toss single butts out car windows or down on the ground. Most smokers I know don’t dump their full ashtrays out the window, but then they try to avoid filling it in the first place. On two separate occassions I have had still lit butts come in through my open window and land in my hair. I am very glad I was not wearing hairspray on either of those occasions.

Smoke if you want to, but throwing your butts is as indefensible as any other sort of litter. It is disgusting. I don’t care how inconvenient carrying that trash is, figure out a way to do it and stop littering.

22

I don’t want to hate smokers, and I don’t. I think that people should be able to smoke if they want to, and I don’t have a problem with smoking in restaurant smoking sections, bars, or the out-of-doors. However, after going on a trash pick up this weekend, my love for my fellow humans who are also smokers was challenged.

It’s not that we went in with preconcieved notions. I went out to a park expecting to pick up beer bottles and cans, food wrappers, and that sort of thing. It’s just that within our group that the cigarette butt to anything other litter ratio was massively skewed, and that every group reported that they spent most of their time cleaning up cigarette butts.

Now for some completely useless statistics for our group:
Beer bottles or cans: 0.
Discarded bouncy-balls: 1.
Used band-aids: Mercifully, only 1.
Pop bottles and cans: 4.
Firework parts: Approximately 10.
Cigarette butts and pieces of filter: Somewhere greater than 200 and less than a gazilllion.

I know most smokers won’t admit to it, but all this trash is coming from somewhere, and if the ‘vast majority’ of smokers don’t litter, the vast minority left over should be keeling over by now.

23

On my commute to and from work, I frequently see a driver toss something out his/her window.

That ‘something’ has never been a scrap of paper. I know that because you can’t, by hand, crumple a piece of paper tight enough to keep wind resistance from being a noticeable factor in its arc.

It’s also never been a beer or soda can or bottle.

Every time I’ve been able to clearly see what was thrown, it’s been a cigarette butt. And the rest of the time, it was about the right shape and size, and moved through the air in a manner consistent with its being a cigarette butt.

Not all smokers are litterbugs, thank God. But on the roads, at least, it seems that all litterbugs are smokers.

24

Much as it pains me, I’m going to have to agree with esvee on this one. Since it’s sort of a pet peeve of mine, I often pay attention to what smokers do with their butts when they’re done with them. Certainly not all, but most of the ones I see simply throw them on the ground. It’s a rare pleasure to see one put it out and throw it away.

I take public transportation, and if you look around at the ground at bus and train stops, cigarette butts are everywhere. I know there are some considerate smokers, but I’m afraid a great many of your fellow tobacco-enjoyers are giving you a bad rep.

No, they’re not.

[sub]But you knew that, right, O Google Mistress? Was that a joke? Well, I’m posting the links anyway, 'cause you know, “Won’t someone please think of the lurkers?”[/sub]

25

Thanks, I think.

26

LITTER BUGS!!
FIE!
A POX UPON YE!

27

what I really appreciate is the lovely pile of cigarette butts right below the enormous NO SMOKING sign.

28

was right outside a terminal cancer hospice. Amazing how a vivid display of the mortality of a loved one bring’s your own mortality into sharp focus.

29

Gee, after reading about “me too” posts I’m not sure how to reply but, I hate those butt throwers too. I got a cig caught under my motorcycle helmet once while driving and I almost died. (yes I WAS going to say “butt” instead of “cig” and only imagined the replies)

(Most) Smokers, who are busy polluting themselves, have no thought for others. This is why filters should be banned. Then the litterbugs could die sooner.

30

Ah, the Pit.

I agree with most of what I’ve seen in this thread, but here’s a dispatch from the other side, as seen by some of those who have more nicotine receptors than most.

The Adventures of Joe Smoker

Phht. Ahh. Hmm, where do I put this? Ah, there’s a guy who looks like he knows this place, I’ll ask him.

“Excuse me, sir, do you know where I could find an ashtray?”

“NO, and I don’t know where you could find some heroin or child pornography either, get away from me, you freak! Providing ashtrays would be the same as abducting nuns and forcing them to smoke big cigars, both promote the evils of tobacco!”

Wow, that seemed a bit harsh. I don’t see any ashtrays, but I could just stick the butt back in my pack once it’s not burning anymore, I guess I’ll just put it out against the steps here and …

“Hey! Those are public steps, you inconsiderate asshole, somebody has to clean those, you know!”

Okay, fair enough, maybe if I just go out to the street and knock the cherry off against the curb…

“Fucking smokers, look at him, like the streetsweepers don’t have enough to deal with, he’s got to leave his burning tobacco littering the public thoroughfare.”

Well, I guess this rock would do…

“Did you not get any Smoky the Bear PSA’s back in Smokingtown, Mr. I Want To Kill All Babies and Little Cute Kittens? Don’t you DARE let anything that might cause a fire fall into that patch of dirt around that rock, even if you are planning to crush it out with your shoe! I don’t want to die in a horrendous conflagration just because you can’t display some moral fiber!”

Okay, frisk myself some, find a metal box that has a couple of throat lozenges in it, hey, a perfect solution! Pocket the throat lozenges, use the lid of the box to snuff the butt, drop the butt into the box, and I should be good to…

“Hey! How dare you carry that non-biodegradable filter around like you’re trying to be considerate, I know you’re just going to dump it in the garbage, who do you think you’re fooling, you son of a bitch, I don’t want my children to spend the next several thousand years cleaning up your stupid filters and being exposed to the toxins in them as they wade through the heavy metals and caustics at the dump you’ve turned our planet into!”

Joe was saddened. He decided that the best solution he could find would be to use the metal box to carry loose tobacco and roll it in biodegradable cigarette papers. His butts would go into the tin, where the remaining tobacco could be recycled, along with all of the ashes he generated.

Joe returned to the place of no ashtrays confident that he had done all he could to avoid killing the planet.

He rolled himself a cigarette, smoked it, put it out, and put the tobacco he crushed out and the crumpled paper back into his tin box.

“Hey, fuckwad, aside from the carcinogens you just released into the air, don’t you realize that by turning the stored chemical energy in your lighter into heat energy you have actually managed to move the entire universe closer to its end state? Who do you think you are that you should have the power to end the universe sooner than nature intended just so you can gratify your oral fixation”?

I’m sure everybody who posts to this thread will have countless stories to prove that Joe doesn’t exist, and that they’re not like that, and as I said above, I agree with most of what’s been posted in this thread, at least as of when I started writing this. None of that is going to change the fact that smokers see things like this as attacks on them, or that they often seem to be just that.

31

I am a smoker…in fact, I have a sign that says:

“The surgeon general has determined that YOUR BITCHING about MY SMOKING could be hazardous to your health.”

That said…I live in the northwest (Seattle area), and I have lived thru a forest fire caused by a smoker throwing their cigarette out the window. It was scary, and ugly, and people lost their homes, and who knows how many animals lost their lives.

Yes, you have all the rights in the world to do what you want.
And we, as a society have the right to haul your ass to jail/court, and make you pay for your foolishness.

Your choice.

32

To be pessimistic about it, maybe the people visiting their loved ones inside had gone out at intervals to smoke heavily. I work in a hospital, I’ve seen even in chilly weather patients hooked up to IVs go outside in examination gowns and light scrubs-style pants to get a smoke. They held their cigarette in one hand, held onto the pole of their IV on a wheeled rack in the other. (Can’t say they were cancer patients, but you get the idea.)

33

i was going to write a pit-worth rant about the tool that decided to create fireworks by flicking his butt out his sunroof creating cinder showers on the car in front of me, and then having the partially-lit butt fly onto my windwhield, but I can only wish a cancerous trachiotomy-talking peg-tube-fed emphysema-hacking slow painful death through his charcol-infested wind bags…

not that it will make a difference, but I reported the thumbless knuckle-dragging intellectual neophyte to LitterButt

34

As a rule, the board administration isn’t keen on the resurrecting of ancient threads.

How about we just let this sink back down off the front page?

35

Oh goody! I don’t really have anything of substance to add to this, I’m just excited because it flows nicely into the thread I started in IMHO about people who see themselves portrayed negatively in a given thread (sorry, I’m too lame to link to it from the computer I’m using right now. Stooooopid!)

I posed the question regarding how people feel when they see their actions portrayed in a negative light. All the while I had in the back of my mind the endless responses in which people declared that * they * didn’t engage in that behavior. I’ve always wanted to see someone* honestly, seriously* address the issue, whether defending their actions or telling the OP to fuck off; whatever.

I will now boldly, yet humbly, step up and say that I was one of the scum sucking, butt flinging smokers in question for the first 15 years of my smoking career. I did it. I did it * a lot * . I’m not even looking for redemption here.

I’ve waited so long for someone to comment on behalf of" the asshole in question" that I’ve decided to do it myself :slight_smile:

36

Sorry for the aside but I have to ask… is your name an acronym, WOOKINPANUB?

37

Actually, I read it as a scale up, from “The vast majority of smokers do not litter.” to “Sure, a lot of smokers litter.”, in mere eight posts.

Realistically, no one knows neither how many smokers litter nor how many do not litter. But I do know there sure are an awful lot of cigarette butts on the ground, at least in my little world, even around public ashtrays. (!?) And I’ve never been in a car with someone who did not toss their butt out the window. Of course, I’m sure all of the butt-tossers are on other message boards, not this one.

38

[Puss in Boots] For you, I could be, baby[Puss in Boots]

Sorry, I just watched Shrek II.

My name represents Buckwheat (from Our Gang) singing " Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places" as channeled by Eddie Murphy.

What might it be an acronym for?

39

Zombie thread that’s being relegated to the great ash heap for good.
Link to the oldies; don’t resurrect them.

Snuffed out.