Posted on 09/26/2006 8:32:36 AM PDT by ConservativeStatement
There would be less of this if there were places to smoke other than in one's car.
Or even if there were still ashtrays in cars.
That may be true ... but failure to self-police, and the resultant external policing is how it got started, and is the stalking horse for the money-grubbing.
I want them to make cigarettes illegal and tax nonsmokers to make up for the revenue loss. It should be fun for the psychotic antis : Indiana's tobacco revenue is $300,000,000 a year, and other states are similar. It would make me so happy to see the antismoking zealots get hit right in the wallet.
If fat people habitually pee all over the beach, they ought to be banned. Smokers toss their butts all over the place with impunity. They have brought this on themselves.
Every rental car I get has an ashtray.
By way of reference, we were up in Tahoe on the Nevada side over the LD weekend. Either due to limited maintenance or smoker demographics, the beach had so many butts it looked like an overstuffed ashtray. I ended up spending a few minutes each morning picking up butts in a 20' circle around our beach chairs.
I wonder what the psychology is behind smokers' affinity for discarding their butts wherever they wish. I guess after the nicotine high, they look down at what they're holding in their fingers and have the same reaction everyone else has to their habit.
Nah ... it's just laziness ... "Sloth" isn't ranked as one of the Seven Deadly Sins for nothing.
Failure to self police may be the way it got started but the stalking horse is now under the guise of, "for the children", or, "public health".
Anti-smokers will lie, straight faced, and outrageously, and get away with it if there is no one around that has actually studied the issue.
Common sense plays no part anymore.
They say if you shout a lie loud enough and long ehough it will be taken as truth.
We see living proof of that saying in the effects of the anti-smokers.
And Smokers will continue to engage in the sort of obnoxious behaviour that got this mess started in the first place, all the while pointing their fingers at the Anti-Smokers and acting like the Anti-Smokers are the sole cause of all trouble in the world. Sort of reminds me of some other group ... can't seem to think of their name ...
I disagree - what type of person begins smoking in the first place? Honor students? Athletes? Normal, well adjusted kids?
No, typically they are low-IQ teenagers who are both suspectible to peer pressure & advertising and who are seeking a means of demonstrating their independence by adopting a behaviour that is perceived as anti-social.
When a smoker discards a butt, it isn't lacadaisical; rather, it's flicked away as part of an engrained habit developed from when they first picked-up smoking.
Some of those, yes. Smokers aren't all (or even mostly) idiots.
When a smoker discards a butt, it isn't lacadaisical; rather, it's flicked away as part of an engrained habit developed from when they first picked-up smoking.
Sure ... laziness can become habitual.
In 21/2 hours, they picked up:
3,383 cigarettes and cigarette filters
1,187 caps and lids
466 food wrappers and containers
427 straws and stirrers
351 paper and plastic bags
315 cups, plates, forks, knives and spoons
209 plastic sheets and tarps
207 cigar tips
178 pieces of rope
151 pull tabs
145 plastic beverage bottles
And they found an additional 784 distinct pieces of garbage -- including 95 fishing lines, 57 toys, 31 bleach bottles, 11 light bulbs, nine six-pack holders, six car parts, two diapers and one tire.
Even if the vdhicle accidentally happens to have an ashtray, it was designed and placed by a non-smoker, so as to render it non-functional.
"Any group of people engaged in an activity which has the potential to be seriously obnoxious to the general public has two options:"
Is it now the Conservative movement's position that we must use the power of government to eliminate any activity that the general public deems seriously obnoxious?
"In the long run, you'll lose."
First you say this, then the rest of your post is just proof why I would win.
Hint to all smokers: It is very useful to take carry an empty altoids container for a portable ashtray.
As a smoker, I resent the taking of my taxes to support lifeguards etc at beaches I am no longer allowed to enjoy, as well as parks.
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