To the editor:

This past year, I moved my business downtown. Being downtown is great fun, but one drawback is that every morning, I must sweep up cigarette butts at my entrance. Cigarette butts litter all of our downtown; the sidewalks are a sea of these little suckers!

The smoking ban has been a wonderful thing. However, by moving the smoking outside of our buildings, we now have a new problem. Besides being unsightly, it is most important to remember that anything swept into the storm sewers goes to the river. I would suspect we all get a little nicotine from our drinking water.

This litter is a crime that even Barney Fife could solve. Just follow most anyone with a cigarette and, sure enough, to the ground it goes. How did this ever get to be OK? Until there is a deposit on the cigarette butts, we need to fine people for littering. Then the word would spread about this serious offense, and we could make our downtown a cleaner and even prettier place.

Fred Sack,
Lawrence