Come with me if you want to smoke.
Down the stairs, out the door and around the corner. The smoking area is just this way, but you'll need a hazmat suit to enter.
You see, all the debris from careless smokers' habit have grown to astronomical proportion, and in order to smoke, you must stand waist deep in butts and empty packs.
There's a valid reason, though, for the butts. The smokers are being forced to walk all the way from their classes to the designated smoking areas.
That's a lot to ask a smoker with cloudy lungs.
It's silly to expect them to walk an additional three feet, or three inches, to an ashtray to extinguish their cigarettes when they could just as easily toss them to the ground and step on them.
In reality, university workers should stop cleaning the smoking areas and instead just dump the ashtrays out each night. Maybe if smokers are forced to stand in their own filth, the lazy ones who throw the butts and empty packs on the ground will get the message that litter is gross.
According to treehugger.com, cigarette butts never decompose and take 12 years to begin breaking apart. If that's not sad enough, within an hour of being in contact with water, chemicals from the cigarette begin leaking out and can contaminate marine environments, according to the Web site.
Cigarette butts are often found in the stomachs, intestines and X-ray images of dead or sick seat turtles, fish, birds and dolphins, according to a tobacco fact sheet produced by citizens for clean, open spaces.
Cigarettes aren't really healthful, which is common knowledge. If you want to smoke, feel free; it is your right, after all.
However, polluting and littering is not part of the deal. Just because the university banished smokers to specified areas on campus doesn't mean that since the mess is in a more compact area, it's allowable.
It's not.
It's gross, it's harmful to wildlife and it's ugly.
Do us all a favor and walk a few feet to put your ash where it belongs.
Read More
Three Air Jam teams take home the win
October 12, 2012Nineteen teams shimmied, shook and flipped for a sold out John R. Emens Auditorium on Thursday night during the 25th annual Air Jam.
Bill Clinton Speaks at North Central High School
October 12, 2012Former President's Speech Could Have Effect on State Senate Race
