Butts, butts and more butts

As this story reports, one of the consequences of the smoking ban Madison implemented July 1 is a profusion of cigarette butts on the sidewalks outside bars. In that article, Shamrock Bar owner Glenn Jahns says that in protest of the ban, he won't clean up the mess in front of his establishment. I understand his frustration--business is down for bars, though my hunch is that once the school year begins, things will start to get back to normal.

But implicit in Jahns' protest is a line of thinking I've heard elsewhere: this mess of butts on the sidewalks is the city's fault. What I've not heard so much is the obvious, which is that the mess is the fault of the slobs who throw the butts on the ground.

Perhaps this ban will finally draw attention to something that has long bothered me: smokers who toss their butts anywhere they please. What is up with this? I regularly see them fly from car windows, and they littered our streets, parks and beaches long before the ban went into effect. Is it another kind of denial? Just as smokers smoke despite knowing the habit is fatal, do litterbug smokers also kid themselves about the fact that littering is littering and therefore profoundly antisocial?

This has been a rant. I thank you.

(Of course, it looks as though Jahns has bigger things to worry about right now, like whether the guy he bought the bar from actually owned the bar. Will Madison lose another gay bar? Will anyone care?)