Wednesday, March 11, 2009
One sunny afternoon in February, I came out of Wescoe Hall, walking toward Watson Library. The sunlight was reflected on a lawn and dazzled my eyes. As I turned my eyes away from the lawn, I spied a girl in a white coat.
She was walking in my direction, holding a cigarette between two fingers. She inhaled deeply, took a long puff, and blew the smoke slowly into the air. It was smooth and elegant. She then tossed away the cigarette casually, as if fixing her hair.
As she passed me by, I stared at her, trying to send a signal. She quickly walked away without looking at me. I looked at the lawn by Stauffer-Flint Hall. It was scattered with a number of cigarette butts.
Cigarette debris tops the list of campus litter. You can see hundreds of cigarette butts dumped on sidewalks, lawns and parking lots, around the doorways and stairwells of buildings and dorms. While many people hesitate about throwing away plastic bottles or newspapers at random places, some smokers are immune to the consequences of dropping cigarettes anywhere.
Many of those cigarette butts stay where they are discarded without being picked up or biodegrading. It’s frustrating that a small number of careless smokers can ruin our beautiful campus. And it is not just us who are bothered by the cigarette litter. Birds may eat it, and cigarette butts can also pollute the environment once storm water sweeps them off campus and carries them into creeks and rivers.
The KU campus is not very smoker-friendly in terms of the availability of ashtrays, but that doesn’t mean smokers can drop cigarette butts anywhere. If smokers think looking for an ashtray is inconvenient, they should carry a portable ashtray.
Most people think littering is bad manners, but when it comes to smoking, people are more tolerant and the awareness of smokers is lower, too. Smokers who have littered campus with cigarettes should give their actions a second thought. Careful smokers and non-smokers should politely show that cigarette-butt littering is unacceptable and embarrassing.
— Miyakawa is a Tokyo, Japan, senior in journalism.
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Comments
Miyakawa: Don’t cut smokers slack for casting aside cigarettes
Completely agree. It's not that hard to put your butts in an ashtray. Smokers ask for leeway in infringing on the breathing rights of others. The least they can do is be courteous enough to throw away their trash.
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