Politics

No Butts About It: Dealing with Pervasive Cigarette Litter

By Anne Landman

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom recently announced a proposal to tack an additional 33 cent-per-pack fee on cigarettes sold inside the city to help defray the expense of cleaning up discarded cigarette butts from sidewalks, drainpipes and gutters. He made the proposal after an annual litter audit revealed that cigarette litter makes up one quarter of all the trash collected from the city's public areas. Naturally, the Reynolds American and Philip Morris tobacco companies oppose such a tax. It seems obvious that they would, but there are plenty of more subtle, under-the-radar reasons why cigarette companies fight litter laws of all kinds.

read more

Full post as published by PR Watch on May 20, 2009 (boomark / email).