Last Bastion of Littering

We live in a time in our country where few things are agreed upon, and one of those things is litter. There aren't many places where it is acceptable to toss your garbage on the ground. Sure you see the occasional fast food cup or hamburger wrapper in the median of the interstate or gum under a railing, but there really is only one form of littering that you find everywhere and you can even see people doing without any social approbation. Cigarette Butts. Did I miss the announcement that cigarette butts are a good fertilizer, or that birds need them for their recommended daily intake of fiber? I know that cigarettes and smokers have been an easy target lately--smokers have lost their ability to smoke most places, and big tobacco was the government's go to scapegoat long before wall street and British Petroleum, but the flicking, stamping, dropping, and stubbing of the lovely filters of cigarettes all over the place is getting to be too much.

I challenge you to find a parking lot that isn't peppered with cigarette butts, or drive in the slightest bit of traffic and not see one of your fellow drivers flick a butt out of a cracked window. Where is the disconnect? I don't understand what tells people to throw their empty pop cans into a recycle bin and then flick their cigarette butts wherever they please. I was recently on a beach in Florida and my daughters and I were building sand castles. We didn't find any tar balls, but we did find a few cigarette butts. This is a major micro moral. I would feel bad if I thought that I were asking a lot, but if there are enough trash cans to keep people from dropping their candy wrappers everywhere then there are enough trash cans to collect all the cigarette butts too.