California is a global leader in environmental stewardship, investing heavily in our pristine coastlines, bays and wetlands. Yet walk along almost any street or beach, look down, and you will see a grim reality: thousands of cigarette butts wedged in sidewalk cracks, huddled against curbs, half-buried in sand and washed into storm drains.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re so common that most of us don\u2019t notice them. That is precisely the problem. The tobacco industry has so normalized this pollution that California\u2019s cities have become outdoor ashtrays.<\/p>\n
This didn\u2019t happen by accident. The cigarette filter \u2014 that orange or white tip \u2014 was never meant to protect anyone\u2019s health. Decades of research, including that based on internal tobacco industry documents, shows filters provide no net public health benefit. Popularized in the 1950s, they suggested reduced harm from cigarettes and thus kept people smoking. The industry remained highly profitable through these efforts and, in the process, created the world\u2019s most littered item. Made of cellulose acetate, a poorly degradable plastic, each discarded filter leaches nicotine, heavy metals, carcinogens and microplastics into soil and water. Globally, trillions of butts are dumped into the environment every year.<\/p>\n
Our team at San Diego State University surveyed 60 census blocks across the county\u2019s eight largest cities. Two rounds of fieldwork turned up nearly 55,000 cigarette butts. Extrapolated countywide, roughly 8.6 million butts sit on public surfaces at any time, and more than 200 million are discarded annually. Mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods had four to six times as many butts as residential blocks. Butt receptacles made no difference.<\/p>\n
A second study near storm drains feeding the Kendall-Frost Mission Bay Marsh Reserve, one of San Diego\u2019s last protected wetlands, shows why cleanups alone aren\u2019t the solution. After a full cleanup, half the butts reaccumulated within two weeks; by seven weeks, they were back to baseline. Holding litter to 10% of current levels would require a cleanup every other day. Cleanups won\u2019t make butts go away. We also found nicotine concentrations in water and sediment samples near the stormwater outlets to be 25 times higher than the level known to harm aquatic life.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a fact: The tobacco industry reaps profits while taxpayers bear the environmental costs of tobacco use. Cities across California absorb the cleanup costs of a product engineered, marketed and sold without regard for its waste products. The industry\u2019s \u201ccorporate responsibility\u201d playbook is familiar: sponsor cleanups, provide pocket ashtrays, promote ineffective butt-recycling programs \u2014 anything that keeps the blame on people who smoke and the financial burden on taxpayers.<\/p>\n
California cities should stop treating cigarette filters as regular trash and instead treat them for what they are: toxic, single-use plastics. San Francisco pioneered a Cigarette Litter Abatement Fee in 2009 to cover the city\u2019s mitigation costs \u2014 a model other cities could adopt. Santa Cruz, Capitola and Santa Cruz County have banned the sale of filtered cigarettes starting in 2027. State lawmakers have proposed statewide filter bans several times over the past decade, but none have passed. Extended producer responsibility legislation \u2014 regulatory standards that California already applies to producers of batteries, motor oil and electronics \u2014 should apply to tobacco companies. And California cities should watch closely as the first-ever lawsuit against the tobacco industry to recover environmental damages from tobacco product waste progresses in Baltimore.<\/p>\n
The Golden State takes pride in its coastline and natural resources, and we invest heavily to protect them. But pride is not policy, and industry greenwashing does not substitute for accountability. More than 200 million cigarette butts litter San Diego County\u2019s streets, parks and beaches each year \u2014 a level no cleanup can ever overcome. This source of plastic and chemical pollution is now known, as is the industry that causes it. California cities don\u2019t choose to be ashtrays, but they will remain so until lawmakers decide that the industry \u2014 not the public \u2014 should be held accountable for tobacco product waste.<\/p>\n
Matt is a psychology professor. Novotny is a public health professor emeritus. Greiner is an adjunct psychology professor. They all teach at San Diego State University and are co-directors of SDSU\u2019s Center for Tobacco and the Environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California is a global leader in environmental stewardship, investing heavily in our pristine coastlines, bays and wetlands. Yet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[964,975,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-397901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-commentary","tag-opinion","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}