I’ve always wondered about this. You are sitting in your car, waiting at a red light, and just as the light turns green, the guy in the car in front of you tosses out his cigarette and hits the gas. Or you go into a hospital and you see a crowd of nurses out front, the ground literally littered with cigarette butts. Or you’re at the university, and you not only have to walk through the haze of nastiness to get to American Lit, you also have to look at cigarette trash strewn across the ground.

Why?

What makes otherwise intelligent, caring, and responsible people think that cigarette butts aren’t litter? Even if you ignore the fact that they’re not just biodegradable paper, they are ugly. Because you throw down your cigarette on the way to class one day and don’t see it there the next day doesn’t mean it decomposed and went back to the earth; it means you’ve made someone else deal with your nasty habit and rude manners.

And now there is this, which comes as no great surprise:

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga study, intended to uncover the effects of discarded cigarette butts on the environment, shows that the metals and organic chemicals found in used cigarettes can leak out, contaminating water and killing microorganisms.

Sheesh.

And I’m glad I rarely am near people who are smoking.

I just got a form from a client – two pieces of paper. I set them off to the side of my desk, perhaps two feet away from where I sit.

And now all I can smell is cigarettes.