What do we have to do ?

We have a “smokers lane” outside at work which is absolutely revolting – you can smell it a mile off and you see the same people out there multiple times per day. Then there’s the trail of cigarette butts from there to the car park… I know there are responsible smokers who do the right thing, but there’s enough smokers who aren’t that make me wish smoking was banned at working places as well as in the car.

I was never a chucker when I was a smoker, but several times I did the dumb thing where the filter tip would adhere to my bottom lip, I’d go to pull it from my mouth to exhale and get a couple of burnt fingers, and occasionally the lit cigarette would fall into my lap, resulting in a dangerous weave and swerve to the side of the road. And a pretty, holey pattern in the car seat cover.

Ugh! Glad those days are over, as of 3.10am, 11 December 1999. Not that I remember it distinctly or anything.

saw this comment on rate the plate….

RATING HISTORY
Car – Sedan Thumbs down – Speeding – excessively Canberra – Fyshwick, ACT
CeeJ(903 silver star) wrote:

Incident occurred: Sat 16 Aug 2008 4:10 PM

Male driver of said Holden Commodore, racing other vehicles along Monaro Hwy, both times in form one lanes, at both Fyshwick & Hume, exceeding 100kmh in 80kmz each time, as well as ciggie out window into dry grass verge.

I didn’t include the plate, but seems that this guy is one of the chuck it out the window brigade.

oh, and one other reason I would never toss a ciggie out the window, is blow back.
(it ends up in the back seat, burning a hole in your seat / passenger)

and have seen one guy who must have forgotten his window was up. sparks, smoke and screaming. had to pull over, I was laughing too hard.

mdme workalot said :

Yes, I find it amazing – my health is seriously suffering, I feel like a leper having a cigarette in public, it costs me a bloody fortune and I smell like an ashtray. Yet I just can’t quit yet, and I don’t know why!

Even if you don’t necessarily want to give up tomorrow, you can ring the Quitline on 13 7848 and have a yap to them. They’ll have strategies and have possibly dealt with people with similar circumstances, blockers, motivations, etc.

mdme workalot said :

Yes, I find it amazing – my health is seriously suffering, I feel like a leper having a cigarette in public, it costs me a bloody fortune and I smell like an ashtray. Yet I just can’t quit yet, and I don’t know why!

maybe, if it is so bad for us, tobacco should be classed as a drug, and made illegal. I would quit then.

Well rather than the incessant ACTEWAGL cum Labour Party political advertising that we are receiving at the moment about ‘securing’ our water for the future by arranging to purchase it from somebody elses dam – would it be more appropriate for an awareness raising campaign re smokebutts ?

Yes, I find it amazing – my health is seriously suffering, I feel like a leper having a cigarette in public, it costs me a bloody fortune and I smell like an ashtray. Yet I just can’t quit yet, and I don’t know why!

mdme workalot said :

Happy with that VY 🙂

One other note – generally when you find piles of butts outside offices, it’s often only one or two people. I know at my work there is (or used to be) a pile of butts – but they were all from the same person.

I remember seeing a representation for a lifetime of smoking in a quit smoking seminar – it was an inground pool full of ciggie butts. should have made me quit, but not yet.

Happy with that VY 🙂

One other note – generally when you find piles of butts outside offices, it’s often only one or two people. I know at my work there is (or used to be) a pile of butts – but they were all from the same person.

Is it because people think that its too cold for a fire to catch ? Are people just getting lazy after a heitened sense of awareness post 2003 ?

Indeed! Why, the hundreds of bushfires the SES has had to report to in the last week alone is testament to the effects these menaces have on our local ecosystem.

Sorry about that jmac….i must have been having a bad day already :)no harsh feelings….

I’d have to dispute the ‘it’s not a minority’ comment

How about we compromise and say ‘regardless of whether or not it’s a minority, you can see people doing it almost constantly and cigarette butts are commonly found on the ground’.

Now why would you want to put a filthy, stinky cigarette butt in a car ashtray when it’s much neater and less smelly to just toss it out the window? Don’t want to stink up your car too much now do you? After all, you car cost a lot of money!

Your lungs, on the other hand, well they don’t have alloy wheels and a thumping stereo. Nor do they make a cool sound when you abuse them. Nobody looks at your lungs at the traffic lights and thinks “hey, nice car, knob-end!” You can’t do burn-out’s with your lungs. It is very difficult to impress bogan-chicks with your lungs. You don’t have to empty the ashtray in your lungs, nor do you have to worry about non-smokers travelling in your lungs.

So lungs don’t matter as much as your car. It’s pretty straight forward.

@VY:
I’d have to dispute the ‘it’s not a minority’ comment – myself and most of my friends are smokers. My friends use portable ashtrays, I use bins or if there are no bins, I put butts in my pocket or in my cigarette packet. Generalise much?

On topic, if I see someone throw a cigarette butt out the window I will generally follow them and politely point it out at the next stop. I do the same when I see someone throw a cigarette butt on the ground, and have been known to pick up butts from one particular offender at work and leave them on her desk. They call me the Smoking Nazi….

I can’t stand this type of behaviour but after the last time where i beeped at someone who did it, in return i got the finger, abusive language and then they started following me…so i have stopped. I just hope next time they do it and a fire does unfortunately start, that it takes their house and possessions with it.

A lot of people in our society have no respect and i think the best punishment is to drive past these guys and flick a cigarette into their car. Tit for tat…if only it was possible..

http://the-riotact.com/?p=4915

I hate this sort of behaviour, and lots of smokers do it – not just a minority.

Mike Crowther said :

You can purchase a portable ash tray for a couple of bucks.
… I am in favor of the imposition of crippling fines for throwing any lit material from a vehicle, …

At public events you can usually pick up a “butt-bin” for free. 🙂

We have on the spot fines in sydney for people throwing cigarette butts out the window. It’s hilarious when the taxi drivers at the lights claim they didn’t throw the butt when they did it in plain sight of uniformed enforcement officers standing on the footpath.

I suspect that we haven’t seen a lot of these until now because these scum don’t want to open the windows of their mobile loungerooms when it’s cold. But today was very warm, the motorbike and pushbike people were out in droves, and evidently the filthy people who throw butts out of their car windows felt comfortable opening their windows in order to throw the previously-precious cigarette out.

You can purchase a portable ash tray for a couple of bucks. So these offenders are just anti-social, lazy grubs. I am in favor of the imposition of crippling fines for throwing any lit material from a vehicle, particularly between October and March. Getting proof that will stand up in court however, is another problem altogether.

I am surprised that the carbon emissions policy doesn’t include taxing people who breed children, but rest assured, in the future it will happen.

Personally, I feel most of the population litters when they give birth.

Cigarette butts on the ground are the least of my worries when I have to share the oxygen with a bunch of baked idiots more dysfunctional than a cockroach frying in a grease pan.

ok….

I am a smoker. I don’t smoke in my car. I don’t smoke near my kids. It is a choice that I make. I don’t smoke in my car because:

a) non smokers ride in my car
b) I will want to sell my car one day
c) I don’t like the idea of having a smoke, dropping it and having an accident whilst searching for it.
d) I don’t think that throwing a ciggie out the window is very bright, especially when I have seen the after effects of a bushfire first-hand.

I won’t have a smoke where it inconveniences others. If I do, after a meal etc, I will always walk downwind from the cafe or restaurant – and have it away from the front door.

I agree with the points of others, and never want to see a fire caused by a cigarette – don’t kid yourself, they CAN start fires, and have.

Now an ex smoker, but I never used to chuck them to the window, I’m also a motorcyclist. Not a lot of fun trying to dodge the ones that get thrown up in the air…. not quite as bad as rock throwing, but you still don’t want to get hit by one on a motorbike.

No.

The fact that it could start a fire notwithstanding, it is flagrant littering. Would they be as carefree chucking their empty coke from Maccas out the window? It is the same thing, so I fail to see why flicking the ciggie out is acceptable to anyone.

Oh and does anyone else think the little RiotAct logo which appears every now and then in photos looks like a cigarette butt?

Interestingly a CSIRO study found that cigarette butts rarely start fires. But I agree that its pretty disgusting tossing ya butts out the windows.

Interesting post – having not seen this happen for ages I reckon I’ve seen it happen three or four times this weekend.

Very little that can be done about it – the type of people that do that are obviously morons, and I suspect kevn is right about how far it needs to be taken for it to be worth pursuing.

I’ve often thought about reporting them, but apparently you’d have to see it right through to the courts.

It’s bloody disgraceful, the world truly is their ashtray. If I actually see the hand go out and the butt go out the window, I blast my horn at them (Yes I saw you, you disgusting pig) in the hope that they will think twice before doing it again. It’s infuriating when they do it in summer, selfish and ignorant. But how do you stop scum being scum? I thought there was a road rule about having both hands on the wheel and not doing things that prevented this. Surely smoking comes under this category?

Hopefully filling up empty UDL tinnies and VB stubbies with dead durrys comes back into fashion before bush fire season starts.

Don’t bag Holt, I live there and it is a damn site better than Charnwood. There are pockets in all suburbs that are full of bogans, the main spot in Holt would have to be the apartments.

There are wankers in cars throwing their smokes out the window all over Canberra, not just in Holt. If they want to get lung cancer from smoking, fine. But don’t litter. It looks disgusting and starts fires.

Can we legislate that all cars have smoke detectors?

Maybe every speed camera can be modified to take a picture of all cars and the image recognition software will detect if you are puffing away. If you are, a member of the politburo will be around shortly to take you away!!!