Charley Guptill: Ashtrays a simple solution to addressing cigarette litter
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"Sarna said in an email that ashtrays were not in the “spirit” of the tobacco-free policy. By this logic, ashtrays signal an acceptance of smoking. But ashtrays are not necessarily an endorsement of tobacco use; rather, they serve as both an acknowledgment that it happens and a way to contain and limit the effects of litter."
When "smokefree" became the in thing here in the UK, ashtrays, sandboxes and bins with a butt tops, simply disappeared as if smokers had too! Filthy disgusting smokers out on the streets, strutting their butts simply dropped them on the ground.
I had a running row with the station master of our nearest station to clean it up outside the entrance where every ashtray of any variety had been removed. It is a well kept station belonging to Virgin Trains in the North West. The station master assured me the litter outside the entrance was caused by the smokers and I said it was caused by him having removed any kind of ashtray to give the smokers a place to throw their cigarette ends. He said it wasn't the policy of Virgin Trains to provide anything for smokers.
The most offensive situation I found myself in many years back when every building had some sort of smoking room, was to have to attend a training day where the venue's smoking room was the disused mens' urinal at the back of the building. I can't describe the awfulness of it.
I also can't describe the assault I felt personally by the smokefree blitzkrieg that changed the world from free to chained.
I am an angry and offended smoker, even though I don't smoke. How I was treated as a smoker has been the one great sleight of my life. I will never get over it. It is the power that steams my energy to defend vaping. It is the energy that fuels me still to hate Tobacco Control, Public Health, the European Tobacco Control Directive, the World Health Organisation and all the little people who promote smokefree in any way. They have totally abused society.
I am one of the older generation to whom no consideration was given. The older generation who actually USED ashtrays. I can totally understand why younger smokers just chuck their cigarette butts onto the ground on any university campus, or even in the street. They have never seen a proper ashtray and have, for their whole lives, been consigned to smoke in the most despised places.
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