Dear Mr. Smoker Guy

Dear Mr. Smoker Guy, driving down the street in your itty-bitty Fiat that is oh-so fuel efficient while puffing clouds of tar and nicotine out of your cracked driver’s window.  

Please help me understand something that has been a mystery to me since the beginning of my time on this earth.  Why is it that when you are done inhaling all of the tobacco and are left with the tar-stained stub, that you find it acceptable to toss this trash from the window of your environmentally friendly car? This butt of the cigarette rolls a few feet on the pavement and lays to rest, where it sits for days and days, flattened by hundreds of tires.  Rain will probably eventually wash your butt to the gutter of the road where it will tumble down into the storm drain out of sight.   Once there it will travel to the nearest body of water to become poisonous animal food, or just decorate the shore of our lovely beaches and foul the water with nicotine residue.

Of course, you are not the only one to do this, so maybe you think that it’s okay, because…you know, why not?  You see butts fly from the windows of crusty old Chevys, gas-guzzling Hummers and even modest mini-vans.  So, what’s one more?  

Someone once told me that butts are biodegradable so it is okay to toss them where ever you please because they will, at some point months or years from now, disintegrate and become part of the soil.  In that case, maybe I should have thrown my banana peel, apple core and orange rind out my window today during my trip home from work!  Hmmm.  That gives me an idea.  I am not planning to plant a garden this year, so why don’t I start throwing my compost out onto the street with yours?

Maybe because you are a tax payer you believe that you deserve to throw your stinky trash onto the street because you pay good money to the city government to keep our town shiny and attractive?  Those bureaucrats probably have nothing better to spend money on anyway.  Heck, who needs streetlights, safe crosswalks and pot-hole free roads?

Or, could it be that you just don’t give a rip?  You don’t need to consider litter laws or a healthy environment because you will be dead soon from lung cancer and for all you care the world can fester in garbage without you?

Whatever the reason, I’m glad you stared me down through your rear-view mirror when I gave a short toot of my horn as your smoldering butt rolled into my path this morning.  Maybe for one second you thought about the consequence of your action, or maybe you didn’t.  I know I will sleep better tonight if I believe you’ll think twice next time you hold a butt in your hand.