Cigarette Butts Here, There and Everywhere
Children feel freer on the beaches and playgrounds, because there they can explore the world around them. But unfortunately in these places can be found a lot of cigarette butts, and this is a big cause why kids start to smoke in an early year.
Cigarette butts are consistently the most common litter item found in Australia, making up over 50% of all litter items counted. Cigarette butts contain over 4000 chemicals which leach into the environment when they are flicked or tossed.
Butts are a pervasive problem for local governments as butts are found almost everywhere. Planter pots and garden beds, transport hubs and easements, shopping malls and café strips, outside businesses and licensed premises, flicked onto roadsides, pathways and parks are all targets for butt litter.
On the beaches, people smoke cigarettes even in the water. Such beaches can be met in Maine’s state parks too.
An inhabitant said: “Our state park beaches were really the last place where hundreds of people could be and were impacted by secondhand smoke.”
The new law bans smoking within 20 feet of a state park beach, playground or snack bar. But another bill awaiting the governor’s signature will bans smoking in any outdoor restaurant dining area.
The rivals of the new legislation say they understand concerns about the effects of secondhand smoke inside public buildings but they say banning smoking in the great outdoors is taking things too far.
One of the snack bar owners, Steve Casey said that he created this outdoor patio at The Depot for to accommodate his smoking clientage.
Steve said: “Now smokers may not even leave houses what’s next they can’t smoke in their yards?”
The president of the Maine Restaurant Association, representing 3700 restaurants, said that in this economy it’s just one more restriction struggling businesses don’t need.
