Every Litter Bit Hurts COLUMN BY BUSTER MCNUTT I don’t mind smokers so much because I don’t think it’s any of my business how people go about killing themselves. Most of us have at least one self-destructive habit that will take some of the glitter out of our golden years. Some people smoke, some people eat or drink too much, and some people think multiple partner bedroom shenanigans will be the next Olympic event and this is their last, best shot at taking home the gold. None of this is my business as long as they smoke, eat, drink and did- dle in the comfort and isolation of their own delusions. However I have a real problem with smokers who toss their cigarette butts out in the street. That’s just nasty. Plus there’s always the chance that you’ll stop at a stoplight, and some nicotine crazed bozo or bozette will flip a ciga- rette out the window, it will roll under your car, and at just that very instant in time the rear main seal will develop a microscopic leak and a tiny drop of overworked engine oil will spill out to the asphalt, where it will be ignited by the cigarette butt, turning a whole line of traffic into just so many crispy critters and clunkers (not to be confused with the breakfast cereal of the same name). What’s worse is to be behind a vehi- cle at a stop light, and they open their door and empty the ashtray in the street! That’s another reason I hope they never truly invent a portable toilet for vehicles, but let’s not go there. I read where Maine is so fed up with roadside litter that they are considering a law that would put a five cent sur- charge on each filter tip cigarette. The money would be used to clean up the roadsides. The used butts could be redeemed for cash at the state’s redemp- tion centers. That’s gotta make the redemption center workers just real happy about going to work each day. The state wildlife agency was all for it, since thousands of birds choke each year from trying to eat cigarette butts. It’s gotten so bad that wildlife workers now are required to learn veterinary Heimlich maneuvers as well as mouth to beak resuscitation. Now the concern is that a deposit on filter tips will cause smokers to switch to unfiltered ciga- rettes, which will increase lung cancer in birds by over 1,000 percent. I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that that many birds could die of lung cancer, or the fact that there are government peo- ple who are paid to figure just how many birds would be affected. Smokers must think that filter tips magically dissolve when they hit the asphalt. The truth is that filter tips take just slightly longer to biodegrade than your typical country music singer. Thousands of years from now archaeol- ogists will be finding perfectly preserved cigarette filters in the ruins of ancient highways, Motel Sixes, sports bars, and high school restrooms. They’ll probably figure we stuck them in our nostrils to filter the polluted air, since surely, not even us ancient savages would have been dumb enough to use them as part of a voluntary ritual to inject carcinogenic cocktails into our lungs! And it’s not just cigarettes. People will throw anything out their vehicles. Fast food wrappers, diapers, Archie comic books, beverage cans, and the occasional unwanted pet and/or spouse. The world is their dumpster. It’s gotten so bad that people have started putting “No Dumping” signs along their road- side property. Like this is going to work? Ditto for “Littering is Punishable by a $500 Fine” signs. The odds of getting caught in the act of littering by a police- man are about the same as getting struck by a bag of honey roasted peanuts flung from a passing Southwest Airlines plane. And if you are caught, and it’s your first offense, you can go to littering school and get the charges dismissed! What do they do in littering school? They show a two hour movie on all the different types of highway litter! That’s like punishing speeders by making them watch racing movies! People leave lit- tering school shaking their heads and saying things like, ““Wow, I never even thought of dropping motel mattresses off interstate overpasses!” Now I’ve never been there, but I under- stand that Singapore is the most litter free city in the world. That’s because each time someone is caught littering, they lose a fin- ger. You can probably guess which one goes first. If we did that in the U.S., by the time a smoker finished tossing half a pack of ciga- rette filters out the window, he’d be driving with the steering wheel in his teeth. Or, if it was a woman smoker/litterer, she could look forward to saving a whole lot of money not getting her nails done from that tenth smoke on. Obviously we can’t go around cut- ting off appendages for litterers. A law like that would face way to much oppo- sition from powerful lobbying groups like the ABGA (American Baseball Glove Association), the Yellow Pages Association and in the South, the GOB- GPA (Good Old Boy Guitar Pickers of America). The American Bowl