I smoke but I discard my butts in the trash, or butt can. If one is not around I put by butts in my pocket until I find one. I guess if I were to be taxed for there clean up I would just drop them as I would be paying for the clean up.

Now I can throw my butts all over the place and no one can complain!

That is a very good point. I didn't think about it that way. Its the same point I use when arguing against gun control.

What is being missed:
1. The minority you speak of is using a greater percentage of the resource than the general public. A tax doesn't mean they don't have the freedom do the activity, it just means they need to pay extra for the additional usage they are placing on the system.
2. The litter law is not enforceable for smokers. Can you really police every car that tosses a butt out the window? Yes the law may already exist but what good is it if you can't enforce it? When using that argument for anti-gun control the law is enforceable because the damage warrants the cost to do forensics whenever someone is injured by a bullet. However we aren't going to do DNA testing on every cigarette butt to pass out fines.

An your Ayn Rand quote doesn't fit this case. They are still permitted to do whatever they want. It is also a tax on a commodity not a group of people, if you buy filterless cigarettes or roll your own cigarettes you wouldn't be paying the fee to dispose of butts.

Here's an article on one of the most harmful things on earth, and I see it everywhere I go. Tax this.

http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html




*snicker*

I seriously think smokers have something wrong with their brains. How is it that tossing the butts is not littering in the mind of the smoker? I never understood that logic. Now if you are a smoker and you litter universally, I apologize. But butts only??? Think.

This guy should already be enforcing those littering laws in San Fran.

http://www.truthaboutit.net/pictures/Village-People-Cop.jpg

You're either inclined to casually toss away a butt, or feel self conscious enough to carry it and throw it away properly when the opportunity avails. That's internal wiring. I'm a dipper and rarely spit onto the ground - and then only in dirt areas - never on hard surfaces such as concrete, asphalt, etc. To me a butt's no different than a candy bar wrapper - you consume the product and dispose of the waste in a proper container. Is it that difficult?
P.S. I don't think Melissa's going to be able to throw her butts on the ground - she's not wired for it :)

There you go ... tax those NAIL GUN owners!

First Neal wants all cigarette smokers to succumb to something massively debilitating, not in so many words, but that's the implication. Second, he's all in favour of jacked up taxation on tobacco. Third he is supposedly a libertarian. What is wrong with this picture?

P.S. I'm a pipe smoker, a college graduate, and entrepreneur, and according to my nearest and dearest am not stupid. Besides, them as complains loudest are usually involved in the behaviour they are complaining about! Light one up for me Neal!

I thought smoking fell under a "CIVIL" liberty? Smoking pot is, according to Neal, so what is the difference between the two, they both are bad for your heath! Is Neal picking and choosing here? Looks like to me!

I explain it as simply as I can.

1. Smokers engage in a legal behavior.

2. ALL Littering is already illegal.

3. Smokers also pay taxes for the cleanup of ALL litter. That includes fast food debris, beer and soda cans, gum, condoms etc,etc.

But those things aren't used by a minority, so it's not so easy to demonize, harrass and tax them.

"There can be no such thing, in law or in morality, as actions forbidden to an individual,
but permitted to a mob."
--Ayn Rand

Copyleft is correct on this one.
Not all smokers are dirtbags. Not all smokers litter, but all smokers will pay this tax. We need only enforce the existing laws for littering. A few 500$ fines will make those litter bugs think twice.

This is along the same lines as that ridiculous 90% tax on AIG bonuses that the house passed. Maybe a handful of those people did not earn those bonuses, but the whole was going to suffer for the minority.

Neal is a hypocrite. This is nothing new. Most people are. And this is how politicians get such ridiculous taxes and laws passed…

And just so you know. I do not smoke.

I'm a smoker. I've gone back to rolling my own and my filters are in my cigarette holders so I wouldn't have to pay the tax anyway, but like Tim I'm from the military and when I smoked ready rolls I never ever threw a butt on the ground. If I had to pay a tax for someone to clean up my butt I'd save them and take them downtown to throw on the street. They couldn't charge you with littering! After all, you paid a special fee expressly for the purpose of paying to have those butts picked up.

Whether you smoke or not isn’t the issue. The issue is Freedom of Choice. If someone makes a decision to smoke then so be it. I think this is very hypocritical of you, Neil. You preach the values of Freedom of Choice and on the other hand you beat down someone who has made a choice. It doesn’t matter if you agree with it or not…it was their choice to make…not yours. I don’t necessarily agree with your label you put on cigarette smokers…my father died from lung cancer. He was the hardest working man I had ever seen. My mother never had to work and he put three boys through college. So much for your “smokers are slobs” or “smokers are idiots” theory. I think it is appalling that you would be in favor of the government imposing taxes on someone because of a choice they made. By the way…I’m NOT a smoker. I’m just someone who values the premise of Freedom of Choice.

Why not cross check DNA samples from the Butts against that of every person in the USA - for a potential Butt Violation?

Of course doing this would require (Federally mandated law) to have your DNA sample taken from you at birth - or when you get a drivers license - just like imaging your signature / finger print.

Who cares if its unconstitutional or not - shut up and go along... SHEEP.

This tax is right up the Libertarian agenda. I'll explain it to you as simply as I can.

1. Smokers are free to smoke as much as they want.
2. Smokers are freeloading on the rest of society by making us pay to clean up their butts.
3. A tax aimed only on those who are causing a burden on the rest of the system.

How is this against libertarian principles? Without this tax you are impairing the freedom of the non-smokers. And this tax isn't limiting the freedom of those who smoke, only making them pay for the cost they are incurring on society. It is a 100% libertarian tax.

You need to brush up on your libertarianism Copyleft, you seem to not understand it very well.

We also learned that overeating, eating too much junk food, not enough exercise, driving above the speed limit, talking/texting while driving, not wearing seat belts, alcohol, and overdosing on OTC meds (if 2 Tylenol is the dose, 3 will work faster) is bad for our health. Guess we should triple the tax or fines on all that too. That'll teach us.

I have one butt. I clean it up every day.

I learned in elementary school that smoking tobacco was harmful to one's health. Most others have learned way before that. They should triple the cigarrette tax and hopefully that will teach these idiots that spend money on this rather than on food.

One consequence of this law is that homeless people may start collecting cigarette butts like some of the do now for aluminum cans. So homeless people will be put to work and the streets might actually become cleaner. Just another reason to move to San Francisco if you're homeless...

Someone can easily pick up 10 butts per minute. That 600 per hour. That's $10 per hour. And that's if they pick them up by hand one at a time. But we know they use vacuums and shovels and various picking up tools.
It requires smokers to throw every single butt out their window and they are picked up one at a time to justify $0.33 per pack.

And what about those that toss their McDonalds leftovers, bag, cups and all on the highways and byways, or empty beverage containers (take your pick of type) or the worst of the worst, the gum spitters whose gum gets stuck on your shoe or simply is forever stuck to the sidewalk taking on the round black shape so lovely to look at whilst stolling down the avenue. What about that NEAL?

BTW....Good post Jim Matthews

Normally he'd be outraged at any government action that penalizes personal behavior. (It's part of his "libertarian" persona that he plays on-air.)

But his hatred of smokers overrides that, and he's tickled pink to see the government making life harder for those evil, horrible, smokers.

Ahh, the hypocrisy. It's always there, but it's refreshing to see its new faces and forms each day....

we see real nature of neal boorzt. a name caller to a people he feels superior over.
he's a big deal calling them smokers slobs. i bet he's like them muslims who jeered when the twin towers fell, when he gets the news reports of how many people died of lung cancer.
it's ok, though. a lot of people do that too. i've done that too. i've called neal a LINO, a Libertarian In Name Only.
are you a christian neal? i don't see that happening here

here we go again......
Just for the record, Neal, I am a smoker. Have been for 30+ years. I can't say I've never tossed a butt on the ground but am very conscious about my second hand smoke so as not to offend and often pick up after other careless smokers. I do agree that smokers as a whole are a thoughtless bunch when it comes to their exhausted butts but not all. How many golf balls have you lost in the woods or on the fringe or in the water hazard to sit there littering the earth taking millenia to decompose? Sometimes you can be a self righteous ass.

Wow. Did I read that right? Cigarette butts make up 1/4 of the total trash the city picks up? How could something like this pass when it seems EVERYONE MUST SMOKE for there to be THAT MANY BUTTS!!?? Ooooh, it's San Francisco, nuttin' but butts there!
Love the show!
Jim Guiney

Most cities and states have litter laws. Here the fine is $500. San Fran needs their police to start a ticket-writing blitz against smokers to drop butt. The word will get around real quick, and they will raise some revenue too.