Oh yes! This is a good topic Brenda. I used to smoke on my front deck and then walk over and drop my butts into an aluminum tube that we use to brace up a fence post in our front yard. The aluminum tube is 4' high X 2" in diameter and it only took me a few months to fill it to the top! When I realized how many butts I'd discarded in my front yard 'readymade' ashtray, I was grossed out! I couldn't believe how lazy I'd become. My fence post ashtray is still full of butts! Good question as food for thought Ashley; thanks
Hi Willis; You're doing great here I see.
Welcome back Peteg; you WILL do it this time! Just NOPE it!!!
Duffis, you're right; 70,500 + butts!?*!? It would have to be a mighty big ashtray for that mountain!
The other day a guy who works for an environmental organization handed me a portable ashtray when I was leaving a grocery store. I told him how timely his handout was, that I was just talking with a member in my quit smoking group about smoking and rudeness earlier in the morning. I'll had it to the first smoker I see outdoors.
I used to work out of a construction trailer. One day a friend of mine who had to walk past the trailer to get to her office took me aside and brought to my attention all the cigarette butts thown in the grass surrounding my trailer. Forced to look at them in reality I was MORTIFIED by what I was doing. It did not get me to quit but it did get me to pick them all up and never throw them away like that again.
I normally do not respond to these topics however I did look at my quit meter and now wonder where in the hell I would have littered those 70, 590 cigarettes that I could have smoked if I had not quit 6.5 years ago. Double darn.
Totally agree, Brenda. I remember reading a David Sedaris essary (one of the funniest people I have read) talking about not realizing that when he smoked and crushed out a cigarette on the sidewalk, he was littering. Could be the start of an interesting thread -- how often, and in what ways, have we trampled on the rights of others? Just thinking of my spouse's car mortifies me, how I completely saturated it with the smell of stale cigarettes. Will scrub every surface and every vent, and will never, ever litter again.
Today I stood in a bus shelter while waiting for a bus in the rain. A smoker was in the shelter with us, puffing away. In San Francisco, it is against the law to stand in a bus shelter and smoke. It should be here, too. When we smoke, we have a tendency to think that all rights are equal--maybe it's our emotionality talking. In actuality, anyone's right to life, trumps our right to kill ourselves and others.