I hate smoking during the day or when it’s hot and sunny. I also only smoked in the evenings as well when I did so on my own.
I kind of wish I could enjoy a cigarette here and there. But for some reason, the taste and smoke grosses my out and I gag when I try now. Just can’t seem to enjoy it.
Me too. The only cigarettes I smoke are American Spirit. Prefer their North Carolina tobacco in the US but the Japanese-sourced cigarettes I bought in Hong Kong duty free, in 2018, will do.
My hands don’t smell like smoke, or my clothes, and my tongue doesn’t get coated with the shit that’s added to every other brand.
Something like this? I didn’t really get the joke, personally - I read that like an instruction to throw butts into the drain. Maybe your version was a bit different? This photo is from Okinawa.
I wonder if there’s a reason for not having ashtrays, or if the government just hasn’t ever wanted to bother. I’m imagining some Taiwanese reasoning like ‘if we have public ashtrays then that will encourage people to smoke’.
People do it because they can, and there are no consequences. I’d love for the government to go on an anti-litter campaign and heavily fine anyone who litters (including cigarettes) but that would also need another part where they add ashtrays / trash cans which I don’t see happening soon.
I think the message was the same but the image was different. There was definitely a man and a dead fish…Or I am super creating my own memories of something that didn’t exist…
I haven’t smoked regularly for several years now (full disclosure: I might have one cigarette every 6 months or something), but one of the problems in Taiwan is the lack of public bins, apparently to prevent people dumping household trash in them. In my area, I could easily walk a kilometer or two without seeing a convenient bin (“convenient” = not having to go into an MRT station or wait ages to cross the road, twice, to get to the bin halfway along one of those bus stop platforms in the middle of the road).
I don’t like littering, but I also don’t like carrying a cigarette butt around with me for the rest of the day (this also means having to extinguish it on a wall or my shoe or something, which I also don’t like). If there were more trash cans, I’d happily wait until I found one and put it in there…but there isn’t, so the drain is pretty tempting. Especially as a lot of other people do that anyway, so me doing it or not isn’t going to make much difference.
If you want people not to do negligibly antisocial acts like this, you need to give them a non-pain-in-the-ass alternative.
My harsh judgement of smokers goes like this: If you smoke anywhere that other people have the right to breathe fresh air, including but not limited to: all parks, sidewalks, bus stops, school tracks, and outside my apartment, you are scum /a nasty person / certainly an inconsiderate jerk if you smoke. Period, full stop. If you want to smoke in bars and clubs, your own separate house that has at least 10 meters of distance from all other houses, and other places where people who care about their lungs or are too young to make that choice for themselves can avoid, have at it.
If someone is throwing a cigarette butt down the storm drain, they are stupid, because (in Taiwan) there is no humanly possible way they aren’t smoking somewhere that someone else’s right to fresh air isn’t being infringed upon (unless you’re in the sticks, you are definitely smoking outside someone’s apartment.)
But I’ve always looked down upon people who think it’s acceptable to smoke in public. It’s disgusting and makes it difficult for me and other people to breathe. We shouldn’t have to suffer because smoking helps someone else “relax” or they “enjoy walking around while having a smoke”.
You could say the same about any garbage it’s not an excuse , it’s just that for some bizarre reason (mostly fear of confrontation as most of the people doing this are guys who have been doing it openly for years with nobody saying anything ) it is openly tolerated here to throw cig butts into the drain or onto the street .
Often otherwise nice, considerate people become totally oblivious to other people when they smoke. I think it’s the addiction. The need for a nicotine hit overrides their usual common decency.
they are gas utility inspectors checking for leaks in the pipes below
I know an old building that was having problems getting men to stop smoking in the toilets because people would simply say they had ashtrays next to the urinals so it couldn’t be illegal. Eventually they took them out and are left with divets in the tile where they once were.
The 7-11 near my home took ashtrasy away when smoking outside convenience stores was banned a few months back but put them back, presumably, because smokers were simply using the tables for their ashtrays.
If you smoke, ride a scooter, or own a dog, you aren’t, by definition, a person very good at making decisions or thinking about others in your life.
Uh oh, the circle of evil is expanding !
Sure. And I think lots of folks share your outrage, some for the same reasons as you. Yours is by far the majority opinion on the subject of smoking in public.
Do you think this kind of “open season on smokers” opinion lessens the amount of cigarette butts that disappear down gutters, or increases the amount of cigarette butts that disappear down gutters?
I am not saying that we should tolerate smoking in public spaces like grocery stores, movie houses, airliners, etc. I completely agree that second-hand smoke can be dangerous to others.
My point is simply that humans are going to human, and this is a version of “rewarding A while hoping for B.” In this case I think it’s a mild case of “punishing A while hoping for B.” To be less abstract, it’s case whether public outrage does not curb a human behavior, but instead drives it underground (i.e., avoiding shame by chucking butts down public drains).
Not saying it’s right, not saying it’s wrong, just saying it is.
I thought of including riding a YouBike as well but decided to disinclude for the sake of political correctness.
I think the circle of evil going to first smokers ij general and then onto , of all things, dog owners, is stretching far beyond the original point.
The specific point, and it’s a good one, is why this ONE behaviour, which sticks out a mile here, is still tolerated, whereas you throw a banana skin on the street you may well be hauled up on national TV.
I thought you need to be a foreigner for that?
Slightly. Go to any park and observe the list of rules. Most are observed outside of keeping dogs on leashes and smoking.
Because of who smokes and because it was the status quo for so long.
You neglected to mention “having children”.
Now we are getting somewhere I think.
Personally I think you have hit the nail on the head. Many middle aged men (predominantly ), used to not giving a shit about others and getting their own way, often blue collar but also taike type bosses and middle management . They get a free pass for a lot of shit in Taiwan.
The times I challenged them they were sometimes genuinely surprised, as locals are afraid to do so in the main. Most became belligerent, some sheepish, couple completely ignored .
Its not something I do very regularly as it does have a risk attached to it .
I don’t know, I went up to Smangus and the entire trail had litter. In one of the most remote places in Taiwan, deep in the mountains, on a beautiful trail, I found enough masks, cigarette packets, wrappers, and plastic bottles to fill up my backpack. Just the other day I saw a man eating a 7-11 sandwich and dropped the plastic wrapper when he was done. I wish people were ridiculed, I think it would also help the cigarette butt issue we’re talking about if people saw litter in general as bad.
