What is it about cigarette smokers?

I walked around the back yard the other day as the snow is mostly gone (except where it piled up when we had the roof cleared in January) looking for signs of life. In addition to the tulip stalks and some stray green stems of grass, I found signs of human life.

I like our neighbor. He's friendly, he watches over our house when we're away, he insists that we tell him if his music is too loud. I don't think he smokes. And that may be part of the problem. His buddies do. And they stand on the deck outside his door all winter to smoke, and then flip the butts into our yard. I know that smokers smoke for different reasons, but I suspect one part of why all smokers start is to rebel against authority. And some never get past that phase. It seems to me that's when people are focused only on themselves and if they even consider that their behavior may cause problems for others, they take some pleasure in that thought. But I doubt they ever think of someone having to clean up their butts for them. Do they think maybe they are biodegradable? When I helped the Covenant House kids clean up the garbage on a few blocks of downtown once, by far the the single most numerous piece of trash was cigarette butts. They were everywhere. I bet we collected 50 or 100 butts for every other piece of trash.

This makes me think of the Japanese couple we met in Laos. They both smoked. But part of their equipment was a portable ashtray that was clipped to his backpack. Never mind the irony that they were not going to pollute the enviornment but that their own lungs were fair game.

So I'm thinking of giving my neighbor some coffee cans full of sand that he can put on his deck so his friends don't have to throw their butts into our yard. I wonder if that would help.