Butts...

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Hi people, I'm curious about why people who are habitual smokers seem to have a mindset that the butts are not rubbish, and just flick them onto the ground and then step on them as though that renders the used cigarette butt an inconspicuous part of the general terrain. It seems peculiar to me that anyone would adopt this frame of mind, yet nearly everyone I've ever seen who habitually smokes, also habitually litters the ground with their used butts, without even thinking about what they are doing. I don't see habitual coffee drinkers casually throwing their mugs onto the floor in the corner of the room. Nor do I see habitual gum chewers throwing their wrappers into the gutters - though I'll bet some do. But I've rarely seen a smoker that DOESN'T casually litter the street, garden, lawn or wherever he or she happens to be with their cigarette butts. Even people that are otherwise socially responsible and arguably quite intelligent, well-educated and law-abiding citizens. While any non-smoker will classify cigarette butts as noxious litter (and you can actually make a very effective pesticide by soaking cigarette butts in a jar of water overnight), for some strange reason nearly all smokers seem to have convinced themselves that cigarette butts aren't actually litter, to the point where they flick the things on the ground without any conscious awareness of what they are doing - a very well-practiced and habitual act, so you can be quite certain that many thousands of cigarette butts have become unsightly litter before that one which was just dropped and stamped on, for each and every smoker that does so. I'm hoping that it might be possible to get some insight into the frame of mind surrounding this practice, from the people that actually do it. Are they really not aware of what they are doing, or is there some perspective which argues that randomly tossed, highly toxic cigarette butts are an aesthetically acceptable part of the landscape?