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Why The Hell Do People Smoke?

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05:10 / 15.04.06

I was mowing my lawn today, and on the grass right next to the barrier that separates my property and my neighbour's, I happened to find like, 10,000 cigarette butts on my grass.

I considered picking them all up and placing them into a small plastic bag, and nailing that bag of disgusting filters to my neighbour's door.

I had a nasty note half-written, when I stopped to re-evaluate my actions. Do I return the nauseating bits of cigarettes to their discourteous owners, and risk starting neighbourhood hostilities? Or do I sit by, passively letting those assholes pollute my property/air with their cancer-sticks?

Help Oddman make a decision.

05:38 / 15.04.06

Suggestion:

Toss the butts.
Make a little sign that says, "No Butts, Please" or something of the like. Put it out where they were.

If it keeps happening, nail 'em to the door.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

05:42 / 15.04.06

I'm going to be honest with you, Oddman. You and everyone else in the world needs to just DEAL with this shit for about five more years until I quit. Gimme FIVE YEARS, just five, and I swear I'll be cool.

My neighbors just throw the filters back into my yard the next day and give me the evil eye whenever we accidentally make eye contact.

08:47 / 15.04.06

Have to say, I'd far rather my neighbour smoked cigarettes and was thoughtless in disposing of their butts, than drove a car. That latter method of pollution is immensely more damaging to me, and everyone else. I'm not certain how dead cigarette butts would pollute anyway, except as litter / eyesore.

As to why people smoke, Oddman, that's a very complex tale. We often start when young and confused about it somehow being cool. We continue because we are addicted to nicotine. We stop, after a long struggle, because we wise up. It can take years to kick the habit properly. Took me about five years, as Tuna Ghost outlined above.

08:52 / 15.04.06

Or we start late when as we get older we develop a cigar addiction, and then one day we're out and a friend gives us a menthol cigarette which tastes like fucking winter fresh candy compared to the cigars, and 9 years later we're still smoking the cigarettes, although we do hope to quit one day. sigh

09:03 / 15.04.06

There's orphans living in plastic tents in the high country in Pakistan for whom your terrible ordeal of litter in the grass would be like an dream of heaven. Buy a rake and get over yourself.

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

09:05 / 15.04.06

I'm waiting for the day some brilliant person of science discovers a method to be healthy while still being a moderate smoker. Surely one must exist. I mean for god's sake Kurt Vonnegut is still alive, right? He's like what, ninety? Smokes effing pall malls.

I used to love setting people up like this:

Me: "Yeah, so did you hear about Kurt Vonnegut almost dying in an apartment fire? He fell asleep smoking while watching TV. I thinkin' it's time to quit..."

Person X: "Oh, that's awesome! It's so unhealthy--"

Me: "...watching television."

Try it. They almost always take the bait.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

09:13 / 15.04.06

Have to say, I'd far rather my neighbour smoked cigarettes and was thoughtless in disposing of their butts, than drove a car. That latter method of pollution is immensely more damaging to me, and everyone else.

While I would tend to agree with you about cars on the larger scale, I would say the litter issue is also a pretty big concern. The problem as I see it is with all forms of litter, but (and it is a big bunch of butts) cigarette butt litter does have some specific environmental impact.

I'm not certain how dead cigarette butts would pollute anyway, except as litter / eyesore.

This and this website about cigarette butt litter have some interesting pointers about the biodegradability of cigarette waste. Particularly interesting is the information that the fibres in the filters is largely composed of plastic.

There are many further links from both the above sites which I'm going to investigate further...

Mon Oncle Ignatius

09:20 / 15.04.06

Buy a rake and get over yourself.

Why is it Oddman's responsibility to clean up after hir neighbours who are polluting hir property?

09:22 / 15.04.06

We could switch to filterless.

09:24 / 15.04.06

Why is it Oddman's responsibility to clean up after hir neighbours who are polluting hir property?
We don't have to clean up the environment. We get to son. We get to.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

09:37 / 15.04.06

This company is working on biodegradable filters - press release (PDF, though of a press cutting in fact)

Jack: We could switch to filterless.

Yes, we could, and that would help the biodgradability problem, as would smoking self-rolled cigarettes, but only to an extent. Firstly, the litter is still there, and secondly the toxins in the tobacco waste itself is still polluting the environment.

We don't have to clean up the environment. We get to son. We get to.

I realise this. But my question was why is it up to Oddman (or anyone else) to clean up after other people, especially in this specific case where the cigarette litter is being dumped on hir side of the fence. Obviosuly, the neighbour(s) in question don't want to have this litter on their own property, but are happy to pass it on for Oddman to deal with.

Apologies if this is going off at a tangent from the original question.

09:40 / 15.04.06

Don't birds build nests or something with the butts?

Anyway, you could sneak a can full of sand next to where they normally smoke with some cigarette butts put in there so they kinda get the point.

09:51 / 15.04.06

Oddman should realize how blessed he is to have a lawn to complain about.

09:56 / 15.04.06

I used to live in a parking garage.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

09:57 / 15.04.06

Don't birds build nests or something with the butts?

Not without consequences on occasion.

More research here (PDF).

They do it seems, and the practice may be causing fires, though on a relatively small scale.

09:59 / 15.04.06

Fucking hell, there's a bird living in a hole between the top of my house and where the roof connects too, and I'm a smoker! Thanks for giving me a paranoid weeked. Geesh.

10:01 / 15.04.06

I expect the despoliation of the pretty streets of London by mounds of spent butts will increase exponentially when the smoking ban comes in. All those butts that were going in ashtrays will be littering the doorways and surrounds of pubs and restaurants. Certainly ugly visual pollution but hadn't thought about any other harmful environmental effect, Django.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:06 / 15.04.06

You were bang on about cars, though, Xoc. Although strangely, I always used to smoke more when I was driving.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

10:16 / 15.04.06

I expect the despoliation of the pretty streets of London by mounds of spent butts will increase exponentially when the smoking ban comes in.

I hadn't thought of that angle.

Has anyone in cities where there are smoking bans in place already noticed this happening on way or another, out of interest?

All those butts that were going in ashtrays will be littering the doorways and surrounds of pubs and restaurants.

Where there are already outside smoking areas, there is already going to be a large amount of cigarette litter already, especially in warmer climates/seasons. But as above, it'll be interesting to see if this increases with smoking bans.

Is there any obligation in the smoking ban legislation in,say, Scotland or Ireland, for pubs etc. to provide cigarette bins outside? I would assume not.

Tangentially, and apropos of I'm not sure what, many Parisian bars have a thick layer of discarded fag ends around the bottom of the bar by the end of the night as many smokers there just stub out their cigarettes on the floor.

10:21 / 15.04.06

I just moved to Florida which is nonsmoking anywhere that serves food, and everyplace seems to have ashtray type deals outside.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:31 / 15.04.06

Has anyone in cities where there are smoking bans in place already noticed this happening on way or another, out of interest?

It's certainly happened at my workplace since smoking indoors was banned.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

10:39 / 15.04.06

You were bang on about cars, though, Xoc.

I agree entirely that pollution from cars is a bigger problem. For that matter, pollution from aircraft flights is a bigger problem yet again. Those are real concerns, and can be tackled by not driving (I don't know how to but do have some sort of share in a car) and not travelling by plane (I am about to do so fairly soon, and then hire a car) but sometimes one is placed in a position of convenience and or expense overtaking idealism in both instances.

Isn't part of the question here at least to do with why it's OK for the litter to be dumped on Oddman's property in the first place? It would presumably be the same problem if the waste in question was all organic, biodegradable vegetable matter for example. Though in the latter hypothetical question I would assume a thread about "Why the hell do people eat?" would not have arisen.

Although strangely, I always used to smoke more when I was driving.

Back to the thread question then - why do you think that was?

I'm thinking back to my own smoking days. I think I used to smoke more when bored, and as an excuse to leave my desk at the office and go elsewhere for coffee and a cigarette.

10:40 / 15.04.06

Why The Hell Do People Smoke?

I smoke because it helps me to tune out the crap for a few minutes every now and then, and go to a place that's more relaxing, and where I can focus with more clarity. It's mainly a conditioned feeling that I've made stronger as the years have gone on though, and I can get to that place just as easy without cigs. I just have to carry on training myself to be able to that.

I've recently cut down though, and things are a lot easier (and less smokey) than they used to be. Cig butts : move them all to the part just outside your garden where it connects with next doors, and when they see that they also have to endure cigs all over the fucking place where the rest of the street can see them, maybe they'll stop doing it.

12:01 / 15.04.06

Oddman does have a real problem in that his neighbour is throwing the butts onto his lawn. The wind isn't breezing them along, they aren't getting there through inadvertence. I'd be reluctant to start off a Hatfield / McCoy feud with neighbours unless I could think of no other route. The best thing would be to be upfront and ask them to keep their butts on their own property, assuming they're not a family of serial killers or something. If that prospect seems unlikely or unappealing, I think I'd just start throwing them back into their garden whenever I found them.

With luck, some local sparrow ne-erdowells with build a nest under their eaves out of cellulose butt material and their house will burn down and solve the problem.

14:56 / 15.04.06

In Oddman’s absence, and with no-one else pointing it out, Qalyn: Why are you being such a jerk? Just given up your 40-a-day habit? What gives?

I don’t really see where Oddman refused to recognise the scale of his problem. Frankly, using “poor orphans in Pakistan” to artificially create a larger perspective on the issue which might be technically valid but still largely irrelevant to the issue at hand, is very close to being a tired cliché. Given that I might wish to use Barbelith to express dissatisfaction that the latest Seven Soldiers issue doesn’t seem to have shipped yet, for example, I might have an expectation that this would not entail my being asked to get over myself or think of the broader picture – for instance all those poor children in the Third World who don’t have access to slickly produced comics and who’ve never learned to read anyway!!! What’s maybe more to the point is questioning why you’re happy to exploit such an example in scoring points in an argument I have no idea why you feel invested in in the first place.

Anyway.

Is there any obligation in the smoking ban legislation in, say, Scotland or Ireland, for pubs etc. to provide cigarette bins outside? I would assume not.

Has anyone in cities where there are smoking bans in place already noticed this happening on way or another, out of interest?

Not so far as I know, and, yes. Definitely a noticeable increase in cigarette butts around doorways of pubs / restaurants. That and grey-skinned, red-nosed, wheezing old men, braving the “spring air” in clusters around the same doorways, for their nicotine fix - which is another kind of visual pollution, but I digress. There are some smoking bins but they don’t seem to be mandatory, and certainly so far they’re not universal.

Some friends from work and I were out last night, the first time I’ve been out (to a pub) since the smoking ban came into effect here, and I noticed something was missing: ashtrays. I think what we’re all forgetting about here is the people who worked in past years to provide cheap plastic and glass receptacles for cigarette ash and butts. Well, no longer. Perhaps they will move into creating external cigarette bins instead but I’m only speculating…

15:33 / 15.04.06

I've noticed lots of pubs in Edinburgh now have large metal receptacles stuck to the walls near doorways for this purpose, but don't know how effective they've been.

16:06 / 15.04.06

My partner is a very conscientious smoker. He doesn't smoke inside our house, and he never throws butts on other people's property or in public spaces. When there's no proper ashtray near, he'll press the burning tobacco end off, smash it out, and carry the butt with him until he can throw it away.

It is and should be his problem to deal with the butts, not someone else's to clean up after him. It is rude to view the world as your ashtray.

(As someone who worked for several years cleaning a performance space that had ashtrays in designated smoking areas, and who is not a smoker, I will say that I found chewing gum to be my bete noir--I found myself hating gum chewers more than all the smokers. Have you ever tried to clean gum out of an ashtray? Not to mention the evil of getting some on your shoe.)

Smoking is possibly a sign of depression in teenagers and has recently been shown to increase depression in teens. A friend of mine who started smoking when he was 15 and quit in his 40s told me he found that he had to experience lots of emotions that he would normally have used smoking to kind of "check out" of. For one thing, if things got tense, when he was a smoker, he'd typically just leave the room for a cigarette. One of the hardest things for him, and he regularly meditates and is one of the calmest people I know, was learning other ways to work with his own emotions and emotional situations. I suspect that smoking is at least sometimes a kind of self-medication.

I do wish my partner would quit, because I love him, and I dread watching him suffer through some of the truly horrible diseases that, Kurt Vonnegut notwithstanding, smokers are much more likely to develop. Lung diseases are like a kind of slow drowning. I don't pressure him. He's aware of having a complex emotional involvement in smoking, a fear of the fact that he can't readily stop, and has failed before. He knows where I stand, what I hope for him, and i hope he'll work it out.

16:47 / 15.04.06

In Oddman’s absence, and with no-one else pointing it out, Qalyn: Why are you being such a jerk?

I think no one's pointing it out because popping into threads to belittle people, especially the thread starter, is just Qalyn's MO.

I despise litter in general, and that includes cigarette butts. I just thinking throwing your trash on the street/sidewalk/lawn shows contempt for your environment and your neighbors and fellow community members. I wouldn't throw my empty coffee cup on the street. I've been known to carry a plastic bag full of dog shit for a half mile just to find a public trash can for it. A cigarette butt is far less of a burden to carry, I would think.

I live in a house with one smoker and one non (I don't smoke either) and all of our other friends smoke, but we don't allow cigarette smoking in our house. When our friends came over to hang out and drink a few, they'd all just chuck their butts off the stoop onto the sidewalk in front of our house. I could hardly believe my friends would do this, as I feel it's disrespectful and my friends are not generally rude people. I worried about my landlady, who lives upstairs, getting ticked off about it, and about my puppy eating them. Finally my roommate bought a metal bucket and instructed everyone to deposit butts in it from then on.

No, butts on the lawn are not a true hardship, but it's bothersome. I wouldn't be calling Amnesty International if my friends starting hawking lougies on my living room floor but I'd be offended and grossed out. For Oddman's situation, I like the can of sand idea. If they don't choose to use it, then there may be some kind of deeper hostility going on.

17:33 / 15.04.06

Am I being a jerk? Sorry. All I meant was, this is a very small problem in the grand scheme of things and Oddman shouldn't let it make him nuts, the way, for instance, speaking of MO, ibis got all aggravated that other people's puppies were teaching her puppy bad habits. People do irritating stuff. Let go and let God, you know what I'm saying?

17:43 / 15.04.06

That and grey-skinned, red-nosed, wheezing old men, braving the “spring air” in clusters around the same doorways, for their nicotine fix - which is another kind of visual pollution, but I digress.

I agree. They, the disgusting old men, no, the vile, useless, decrepit sacks of ordure, would no doubt be a lot more aesthetically pleasing, would in fact almost certainly look like ageless sex gods if it wasn't for their hideous addiction, and you, as a non-smoker, have the perfect right to demand that they never go out for meals, drinks or even fresh air until they've a)renounced the habit forever and b)had all traces of their (surely wasted and shameful) years as cigarette junkies removed from their faces by extensive, costly and extremely painful plastic surgery. Tough love, that's what they need - With fair-minded, reasonable and idealistic youngsters like you around, us old-aged pensioners have got nothing at all to fear from the future.

17:52 / 15.04.06

ibis got all aggravated that other people's puppies were teaching her puppy bad habits.

Right, like smoking! See, it all comes full circle.

18:52 / 15.04.06

Ibis:

I think no one's pointing it out because popping into threads to belittle people, especially the thread starter, is just Qalyn's MO.

Oh.

Sorry. All I meant was, this is a very small problem in the grand scheme of things and Oddman shouldn't let it make him nuts…

Fair enough.

Loomis: Well, I have seen a fair few of those metal receptacles with cigarette ends scattered beneath them in a decorative fashion, which maybe offers a clue as to how it’s been going.

Alex’s Grandma: Don’t forget these cigarette junkies’ years of habitual alcoholism, where similarly I wholeheartedly agree that sensitivity to the issue is no substitute for tough love, and restricting their access to the general public until they’ve overcome both their moral and their physical and aesthetic deficiencies. New Puritanism, that’s what I preach!

…

I am, of course, having fun, and continuing the use of visual pollution was on reflection perhaps “a little harsh” a description regarding my observation of a new variety of Scottish fauna turning its face to the sun. Hell, it’s bloody cold up here, I admire their persistence! But I do apologise if any old-age pensioners such as yourself felt injured by my post.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:12 / 15.04.06

I think Oddman's real problem, as illustrated by the initial post anyway, is not really with smoking so much as people dumping their shit on his property.

I smoke. I try to get rid of butts responsibly.

I have a real problem with people who leave chicken bones in the street (which may well have been, according to the vet, what killed Biscuits, my last dog). I don't eat chicken. As a vegetarian, I actually find the eating of chicken fairly repellent. I don't, however, have a problem with people who do it... until they start decorating my local pavements with their spoor. Which they do, a lot. What dog's not gonna go for some bones left on the pavement? Problem is, once deep-fried, chicken bones are even more splintery than usual, and can cause choking and internal bleeding.

Now, do I get arsey with people who eat the stuff? No I don't. AS LONG AS THEY DON'T DUMP THE SHIT WHERE IT CAN KILL.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:13 / 15.04.06

(Sorry, that was kind of off-topic, now I come to think of it. Concentrate on my first couple of lines, if you would).

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