Illegal litter

Anti-smoking legislation has recently been very popular in Oregon. First, smokers are kicked out of bars, then taxes are raised on cigarettes and now legislators want to make it illegal to litter cigarette butts. Cups and cans would remain legally litter-able items, however.

House Bill 2676 seeks to make the littering of a cigarette butt a Class B Misdemeanor, for which the penalty would be a fine and/or community service picking up cigarette butts on private property.

This bill is not entirely a bad idea, but when it stipulates only cigarette butts, therein lies the problem.

Littering is a big problem in many urban areas. People throw their trash any place they please and this trash builds up over time. According to the Ocean Conservancy, the most littered item in the United States is the cigarette butt. However, it is certainly not the only littered item.

It would be difficult to find someone that is pro-littering. It’s certainly not this writer. But singling out one group of people to punish for littering, without attempting to make any concessions at all for those people, is just wrong. I am sure that a similar law for another item would be turned down as preposterous.

At many bars, when smoking was banned, so were the ashtrays. Where are smokers supposed to put their cigarette butts when there are no proper receptacles for doing so? So instead of the city requiring or even just increasing the number of available ashtrays or trashcans, they want to just take the easy route and attack smokers. Many smokers find the gutter a convenient place in which to dispose of their smoked cigarettes, especially because many bars do not, and are not required to, have ash trays outside of the bar.

Policing littering, as it stands, would be much less effective and possible than actually trying to make people more aware and giving them more opportunities to dispose of their trash properly. What is needed are more trashcans and ashtrays, or perhaps a mix of the two, along the street. In Japan, smokers carry around temporary portable ashtrays in which to store their butts, which has helped cut down in litter. In some cities around the world, all littering is illegal and trashcans are abundant.

Oregon needs more ways to mitigate litter without punishing people unfairly.

Imagine flicking a cigarette and being stopped by police, while someone five feet away litters anything else, in front of the police officer, and walks away unmolested. Either all littering needs to be punished similarly or none should. There is a loose offensive littering law in parts of Oregon, but it applies only to private property and not city streets. This new bill would make it possible for smokers to be fined for littering anywhere at all.

I am not entirely against making laws against littering, but singling out a single group of people is just wrong and sends a bad message about how the state views the rights of citizens. I also opposed the bill banning smoking in bars for some of the same reasons. Not surprisingly, the passing of that bill may very well help in passing HB 2676, which has failed for the last five years.

Smokers are easy to attack, and once the door has been opened for one banning, it becomes open for all. This law is incredibly unfair to smokers not only because they are being singled out, but also because nothing else is being done to mitigate the problem; the state is taking the punishment straight to the individual without thinking about how they may be responsible.

This kind of bill, or even a more balanced one that bans all littering, seems rather arbitrary. The solution to the littering problem lies not in forbidding it, but rather by making it easier to not litter and by raising awareness on the effects litter has on our environment. Just saying “No!” without providing context or alternate means is not the right way to teach people.