No But`s about Cigarette Butts

Written by Deborah Jordaan

Good day to all our favourite readers and to the new subscribers. Today I`m approaching the subject of cigarette butts, I myself was a smoker but quit the habit. Cigarette butts are detrimental to the environment and smoking is detrimental to your health.

Cigarette butts pollute the environment in the sense of it being digested by little animals and birds as they can`t distinguish the difference between a worm and a cigarette butt. I`m not here to insult all smokers it`s just a general observation.

When you smoke don`t flick it out the window or onto the ground, be a considerate smoker. Take a coffee tin in your work environment, fill it with sand and put your cigarette butts in there. Consider people and animals that don`t want your waste.

Each smoker has a choice just like any other addict. There are smokers who smoke in front of children and babies, you then wonder why when your children are grown that they smoke. Smoking first of all damages the lungs, smells bad and the second-hand smoke causes numerous health conditions.

People that have smoked for years say that if they stop smoking they will die anyway, my late mother`s words as well. She was born with asthma and in later years developed emphysema and passed on from that condition still smoking with all of the conditions she had.

The co-dependency of a cigarette smoker is to buy a lighter or matches which once again affects the environment because trees have to be cut for matches and gas, plastic and metal is used for lighters which is not bio-degradable. Why not just stick a few bricks with cement on top of your head and you can look like a real-life chimney.

In Afrikaans they call you tant Stienie, she used to be a character on a television show in the 1980s, always had a cigarette in her mouth and curlers in her hair. If you saw her you would look next time for your tant Stienie.

Many family members would get into arguments because of holes burnt in bedding, couches and beds. Never mind little children walking into the burning cigarette in the adult’s hand while the adult socialises.

Every cigarette you smoke reduces your expected life span by eleven minutes. Imagine if you stop smoking you would have more time and money to buy shoes. I would rather have shoes on my feet than smelly cigarettes.

Kissing a smoker even if they have eaten ten packets of mints is like kissing a wet ashtray. Not to mention cooking with yellow fingers, nee dankie ek wil nie jou kos eet nie.

If you are bored in between chores or work don`t smoke contemplate your next move in life or the next pair of shoes you are going to buy.

As a nurse or any person working with people do you want to smell bad by talking to them and they smell the smoke on your clothes or by breathing on them, oh so gross!

Remember I was there where you are, you might still be smoking so I`m not here to insult or judge.

So to end your day don`t grab a fag go deep down inside yourself, find the American Indian in your soul and smoke a peace pipe.