By: Sharon Aron Baron
Sometimes when I’m sitting in traffic behind a smoker I play a game: I see if they will throw their cigarette butt out of the window or in their ashtray. I always bet the window.
I never lose.
These same people, who would never so much as throw a fast food container out of their cars, are littering our streets with thousands of cigarette butts each year. For instance, if a smoker threw just three cigarettes a day out their window, that would add up to 1,095 cigarette butts littering our streets.
Many smokers don’t want to dirty up their cars by using their ashtrays, that is, if they even have one. Many car manufacturers don’t even have standard ashtrays in them any more. This is the excuse that these butt-heads love to give for littering because cars companies sell “smokers packages” that turn a cupholder into an ashtray, however, smokers don’t want to dirty up their new car, choosing to dirty up our streets instead.
Florida litter laws say that any person who dumps litter weighing under 15 pounds is guilty of a noncriminal infraction punishable by a civil penalty of $100, from which $50 is deposited in the Solid Waste Management Trust Fund. In addition, the court may require the violator to pick up litter or perform other labor commensurate with the offense committed.
In truth, the Coral Springs police are not going to enforce this because they don’t have the budget or the manpower to write tickets for these types of small infractions.
A public awareness campaign needs to be created to stop these litterbugs. Maybe residents should have bumperstickers that say. “Smokers: Don’t be a butt-head. Keep Coral Springs streets clean.”
Author Profile
- Editor of Talk Media and writer for Coral Springs Talk. CST was created in 2012 to provide News, Views, and Entertainment for the residents of Coral Springs and the rest of South Florida.
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8 comments
I think the fat fucks who throw their Doritos bags on the street are a bigger problem.
Exactly what did the government think would happen when they pushed car manufacturers to stop putting ashtrays in cars? Cause and effect.
Actually this was not “government” this was the decision of car manufactures themselves.
With the urging of the government. Not a mandate but a push.
There were cigarette butts all over in the 70s, too, and you’d have been hard pressed to find a car without an ashtray then.
You ‘oh noes the gub’mint’ types are a pox on the nation.
The article was about cigarette butts thrown out car windows, not by people just smoking outdoors. And yeah a little tired of government mandating our lives on a multitude of issues, its not their job.
Wait, are you actually saying nobody threw cigarette butts out of cars in the 70s and all the cigarette butt litter was just caused by pedestrians?
Tens of millions have smoked over the last 100 years. You would think we would be walking around up to our wastes in them, funny how they are all gone. Smoking is fading away. Worry about something else