Smoking is such a bane to this world. Time for the world to move on from this crap.
Seems like cotton filters could be the solution to this? People are addicted and won’t just give up a vice, but if pressure could be put to switch to non plastic filters in the industry that seems like a good step.
I get it, smoking is bad. The world is slowly transiting away from it. But this right here is the most common sense approach. This is a manufacturing issue. Even if cotton weren’t suitable for whatever reason, there’s got to be another alternative. Stopping people from smoking is a separate issue that will take years to accomplish, and various approaches could be used to make progress there. In the meantime, let’s just not make them from plastic.
We need to switch back to micronite filters for the environment.
For the uninitiated, those were made of asbestos.
The box should have space at the top for as many butts as there are cigs. You collect your own smelly garbage and give it back at the store you get them at retail price. Don’t have a full butt pack? Pay 50% more.
Playing devil’s advocate here, there’s a couple issues with that. First, an empty spot in the pack means it will crush more easily in someone’s pocket, during shipping, etc. Second, like you mentioned, those things are smelly garbage once they’ve been used. A lot of smokers aren’t going to make the rest of their pack taste and smell like that, or carry that smell with them all day long. Also, it doesn’t address the issue that these single use, disposable things are made with plastic in the first place.
Ban filtered cigarettes. Problem solved!
Just follow Australia’s example and make them virtually unaffordable (especially for most of the smoking population).
Great way to create a black market.
Smokers are also disproportionately lower-income, so its just punishing poor people even more. Its very difficult to quit smoking and raising costs won’t do it for a lot of people.
Raise costs in the form of taxes, use the taxes to provide cessation assistance services.
