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Michael Franzen of Aurora writes:

Here is an open letter to all you smokers out there. First of all, I am not a smoker nor am I a nicotine nazi, obviously, because my wife smokes. Second, because I believe that the second hand smoke issue is exaggerated. My deepest sympathies go out to people who have lost loved ones to lung cancer, but I am willing to bet that for every person that has died from second hand smoke, one hundred thousand didn’t.
My problem with some smokers is, I’m tired of getting up in the morning and having to pick up ciggarette butts off my lawn and driveway. I’m tired of them flipping their butts out of windows instead of using the ashtrays, my wife would never flip a butt out any window, she says it litters the Earth. The tabacco is biodegradible but the butts are not. I am also tired of hearing on the news that half of our forest fires are caused by ciggarette’s.
I am also willing to bet that, these patios that smoker’s now have, that if you look at the sidewalk’s, there will be butts all over the ground. This being in spite of the ashtrays provided.
Maybe, before complaining about your rights , you should quit shooting yourselve’s in the foot and clean up your act a little? Maybe then some non-smokers might be a little more sympathetic to your rights. You all say, don’t tell me what to do, that’s fine. Your the one’s loosing your rights, not me.

This letter has not been edited.

READER COMMENTS

Here we go again with somebody who thinks that smokers have any rights to begin with. The non smokers aren't sympathetic because simply for the fact that while they were technically old enough to be in a bar, that doesn't really mean they were intelligent enough to make a decision based on what they want to be exposed to. Strange how the car your wife is riding in puts out more pollutants into air and is much worse for the earth than any amount of cigarette butts ever could.

Finally--an issue on the smoking debate to which I can say: I agree completely! Michael is right--the number of cigarettte butts on the ground is outrageous and disgusting. Pick up after yourselves!

Good point, Michael (although you got a little snarky toward the end). I'm a smoker who is a big advocate for what I loftily call smokers' rights, and yes, it's totally our responsibility not to ditch our butts out the car window or onto the sidewalk. Most smokers I know obey these rules, but unfortunately it's the whole bad apples thing that can ruin it. I look at it like this: littering = slobs. We're trying to quash the perception that smokers are slobs, and instead return to the old-school image of the smoker as suave and debonair man-about-town.

Where did you get your facts about cigarettes causing half of the Forest Fires? No doubt from the very people you say you are not part of the smoking Nazis...

It's not the smokers who are losing rights, it's the property owners. It's just too bad we had that horrible group who went around forcing nonsmokers into smoking bars against their will. I heard some were even hogtied.

My motto is..."Just because I smoke doesn't mean you have to." There are people in my life who don't know that I do.

I was recently at an outside gathering in my neighborhood, and a man in the middle of the crowd lit up....I was appalled.

Smokers have for the most part asked for the tighter restrictions because they are not being considerate.

But if we were all more considerate there would be a lot less problems in our society.
There, now let's see if Truth, Anderson, and Skank-man can pick on me for that!!!

Smokers leave a trail of their filth everywhere they go

Being considerate got us pros nowhere....Maybe all those butts in Mike Franzen's yard might not have gotten there if they could have been smoked in a bar.If I knew the location of said yard,maybe I'd contribute too.

It seems the eternal argument has now been reduced to the real gripe non smokers have. I agree that smokers should be aware of where they are and be considerate of non smokers. That said, the littering problem is not, of course, limited to smokers. I see everything from fast food wrappers and paper soda cups along the sides of streets and in parks and even in my front yard. I see old tires, sheets of construction plastic and all sorts of trash which has be thrown out of cars and trucks. When was the last time you saw someone stop there vehicle to pick up what blew off or out off there truck or car.. The ones most responsible for this are lunch hour office workers down town, constrution workers on job sites, shoppers in and out of stores and just about everybody else, including you and me who get in such a hurry about nothing, we don't have time to walk over to a garbage can and put our mess in it before leaving the parks and malls or the work sites and outside lunch spots or the parking lots and rest areas or any other place they are.

Now, why is it nonsmokers insist on blaming smokers for anything and everything from all deseases to every environmental problem that exists. We are taxpaying, hard
working, voting, family men and women just like you. We have a vice but so do you I bet. So get of your high horse and start acting like the rational, reasonable and respectable peo-le you parents were or taught you to be.

Ciggy butts are the most prevelant form of litter in our country.

If you throw your butts out the window,
you are a disgusting, littering, scumbag.

Somone is on "a high horse" to not want to share in your vice?

I'll never forget several years ago driving past the fire in Bailey started by high school students and their cigarettes. The mental giant driving in front of me slowed to a near stop to look at the fire and then tossed his cigarette butt out of the car window. Cancer addicts can whine all they want, they alone are responsible for losing their so-called rights due to their total lack of consideration for others.

These really are the "Yeah, but" years, aren't they? Brought on, of course, by the moral hypocrisy of those who claim to be our moral superiors (you know who I mean: the right-wingers who try to excuse away their own peccadillos with "Yeah, but Clinton..."), and the Wrationalizations of the Wreligious Wrong: "I make mistakes because I'm not perfect; you commit sins because you're not moral."

Allen Campbell gives us the latest example of this with his "Other people litter things besides cigarettes." I guess children are no longer asked "If everbody else jumped off a bridge, would you?" (I always liked comedian Rick Reynolds' idea for punishing litterbugs: whatever they littered gets shoved up their butt.)

The particular trouble with littering cigarettes is that so often they're still lit, flicked away by some careless smoker in that contemptuous I'm-so-cool gesture, and quite capable of starting fires. Or tossing them out of car windows on the freeway--absolutely inexcusable. ("Yeah, but Clinton...")

The people smokers should go after, instead of insulting nonsmokers, are their fellow smokers who make all smokers look bad by not cleaning up after themselves. They're really the ones you have to thank for the statewide smoking bans; otherwise, maybe a compromise might have been reached.

One of the things I most enjoy is insulting the antis.Hans,while you and Fritz would undoubtedly enjoy inserting foreign objects into the vulgar aperture(hey,you mentioned it),some of the guys over on the pro-gun thread might enjoy educating you on the consequence of attempted homosexual rape....All seriousness aside,folks,the ban is working about as well as Prohibition-and the immigration laws....Dumb laws,and haphazardly enforced laws always nurture organized crime.I wonder what kind of syndicate the smoking ban will help create.

I'll tell you what is really disgusting--all of you lazy dog owners out there who can't be bothered to pick-up your precious little pet's droppings.

Disgusting, nasty and unsanitary. Perhaps we should outlaw dogs too....

I thought smoking was supposed to calm the nerves; if that's true, I hate to imagine what smokers would write if they were angry!

When your smoking inevitably lands you in the oncology ward, Jimminy, I'm afraid a doctor may have to insert a foreign object into your vulgar aperture (and from your nasty little missive, that could be anywhere on you), causing some of your friends over on the pro-gun thread to educate the doctor on the consequence of blah blah blah.

Incidentally, if you're old enough to make a reference to "Hans and Fritz" (an early 20th Century comic strip called "The Katzenjammer Kids," for all you post-boomers out there), you're far too old to indulge yourself in such adolescent invective.

In other words, mind your manners, schmuck.

Or what?

I'm complimented!Having a Yiddish insult thrown my way reminds me I'd always admired the Israelis' drive to push back at their enemies and it's an excellent model for us pros to adopt.Works a whole lot better than the Stepin Fetchit/climb-in-the-boxcar mentality foisted upon us by the antis.Manners towards a schweinhundt like Hans? Never again.

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