The Columnist Manifesto

You can ban smoking all you want -- and I'm a huge supporter of smoking bans in all public places -- but smokers will have their day. No smoking on airplanes or in airports, but when you leave the airport, you have to pass through a belt of second hand smoke at the exits to baggage claim.

Our Town recently enacted a smoking ban in all bars and restaurants, and the smokers now congregate just outside. Here's the sidewalk in front of one of our neighborhood bars, Sunday morning:



It's the law of unintended consequences, I guess.

This scene got me thinking: when was the founding moment in the history of smoking when society said it was okay to throw your f***ing butts on the ground? Often lit? Out your car window on the highway, still lit?*

When the backlash against littering was launched in the late 60s, who won the exemption for ciggy butts?

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The other day, as I drove over a bouncing lit cigarette tossed from a car on the highway, I wondered: Has a lit cigarette thrown from a moving car ever bounced into the engine housing of another car and started a car fire?