HOULTON, Maine — Now that the weather has started to improve, people are noticing signs of spring, including cigarette butts popping up on streets and sidewalks.
Kim Hannigan of Houlton has started her daily walks through the community again, including through Market Square, which she and several of her walking companions consider the heart of the community.
She agrees with the assessment by the town council chair at a recent meeting that something should be done about all the cigarette butts being discarded on streets and sidewalks.
“I agree that it has gotten a bit out of hand,” Hannigan said Tuesday evening. “I know that more people have moved into apartments in the downtown, and I think that is great. But a lot of these apartments and businesses are smoke free establishments, which means people are coming outside to smoke and just discarding their ashes and butts everywhere. Its gross.”
During a council meeting on April 22, Chair Jane Torres, who is also the executive director of the Greater Houlton Chamber of Commerce, said that unsightly cigarette butts are being dropped on the sidewalks, in alleys and even in the flower beds and at the base of trees in Market Square.
Councilor Chris Robinson asked if there were any sand filled cigarette receptacles or other such containers in the downtown area that smokers could use.
Torres said no, but suggested that officials look into “making it so people can’t smoke outside” in the downtown.
That suggestion did not gain much traction with other members of the council, and Hannigan said she didn’t support the idea, either.
“I believe the town needs to put out some cigarette receptacles, or at least put up some signs to remind people to dispose of their cigarettes properly,” she said. “I am not in favor of more regulations or giving the police more work to do.”
Jason Morrison, a smoker who often walks through the downtown, said Tuesday that smokers tend to toss their cigarette butts on the ground because there is nowhere else to put them.
“People discriminate against smokers now,” he said. “It used to be that there were ashtrays everywhere, and cigarette containers were outside the doorways of buildings. Businesses catered to them by putting ads on ashtrays and matchbooks. But it isn’t like that anymore. So when you are walking along and smoking, you pretty much have to toss your butts on the ground. There is no where else to put them.”
He said some of his smoker friends stub cigarettes out in their gloved hands and stuff the butts in their pockets in the winter, but added that the action “wasn’t practical” in the summer.
He said it would be a “great idea” to have a few cigarette receptacles around, especially during major events like Midnight Madness, the Houlton Agricultural Fair and Potato Feast Days.
Morrison’s girlfriend, April Carol, is not a smoker, but said that a public relations campaign to encourage people to discard their cigarette butts properly, combined with putting receptacles in the downtown area, would “take care of the problem.”
“I don’t think it would solve it completely, but it would lessen the issue,” she said.
