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One reason to ban smoking in outdoor parks, argues guest columnist David Loftus, is the tendency of smokers to throw their butts on the ground in the South Park Blocks and elsewhere.The statue of Abraham Lincoln in the South Park Blocks between SW Salmon and Main with the Oregon Historical Society building to the right.

(The Oregonian/Drew Vattiat)

By David Loftus

The Oregonian editorial board largely misses the point in

in downtown parks, perhaps because the Portland Bureau of Parks & Recreation is also missing it.

The proposed ban addresses not just a public health issue, but a much more serious one: environmental quality.

Smokers appear to be the only citizens who assume they are free to litter with impunity. They drop cigarette butts all over the South Park Blocks, two blocks west of The Oregonian’s offices and two blocks east of my apartment, by the hundreds.

We know this because my wife and our neighbors in the volunteer Friends of South Park Blocks have been picking them up by the hundreds twice a week for nearly two years.

This littering violates the law. Worse, it dumps a toxic mix of pesticides, fungicides and herbicides used to grow the tobacco, and arsenic, nicotine and heavy metals in the butts themselves into the grass, gutters and streets of Portland.

There, the birds, dogs, wildlife and children can smell and possibly consume this trash. Then it washes into our streams and rivers.

It’s only a tiny cigarette butt, these litterbugs must tell themselves. No big deal. But if you multiply that by hundreds a day in the South Park Blocks, hundreds of thousands each day across the city and billions across the nation, then we have an environmental problem.

There are not only plenty of trash barrels in the parks, but you can buy a portable ashtray at cigar stores. However, too many smokers seem unaware of the existence of either.

If they had policed themselves, the rest of us might not have been irritated enough to seek this ban. If the Portland police assigned a few foot patrols to cite violators, this careless assault on our parks might have stopped -- or at least we’d have less of a revenue problem.

I don’t wish to impugn the civic mindedness of the vagrants, street kids and drug dealers who hang around the Lincoln statue The Oregonian pictured with its editorial. I’ve also witnessed the drivers of Lexuses and Mercedes drop burning butts on Broadway outside the Hilton a few blocks away.

The person who wrote the Oregonian editorial needs to be reminded that with freedom come responsibilities. If he would agree to pick up the butts from the South Park Blocks several times a week so those of us who actually live here don’t have to … or persuade the smokers who have been littering to refrain from poisoning our city parks and streets … then I’ll consider giving up my disgusted support of a smoking ban in the parks.

But not until then.

David Loftus lives in Southwest Portland.