We passed her on the train platform, tall, mid 20s, sporting a stylish winter coat, hair well kept. She was probably reasonably well educated, reasonably financial. And she sucked on a cancer stick. I thought, another sucker for the billionaire multinationals and their rat experiments.
My husband caught the front carriage and I headed back from my walk to the station, passing the woman.

She pulled the cigarette from her lips, it’s filter carrying who knows what; meningitis, flu? Then she dropped it to the platform, ground it out with her nice boots and got onto the train.

Two hundred bucks, I thought to myself like a bounty hunter. That’s the fine for what she just did.

And I forgot to think of the article I’d read in the newspaper of the trillions of cigarette butts washed into our waterways, our oceans, found in the stomachs of poisoned whales, dolphins, seals, penguins, fish and sea birds. She’d paid for this vast array of toxins and carcinogens these expensive ‘consumables’ contain, it’s lead, cadmium and arsenic, so maybe felt she’d bought the right to litter with it. It would only take 12 years for that butt to break down…12 years.
I didn’t even think , there goes someone who will spend $10.50 a day, $57,000 over 15 years of smoking, supporting the billionaire cigarette companies and the many things she’ll never afford.

I didn’t think about her being the more likely of that one in three women who’ll develop breast cancer or what she’ll look like as gum disease and circulatory problems set in, or the speckles of blood which will appear in her inflamed lungs with each cigarette bringing her closer to lung cancer.

I didn’t think about the contribution of smokers to greenhouse emissions (patio heaters used to accommodate smokers increased the UK’s carbon emissions by 380,000 tonnes a year and using one for 2 hrs a day produces the same emissions as a car in an averaged day’s driving, not to mention the abundance of direct smoke into the atmosphere and the use of fuels in producing both patio heaters and useless cigarettes in the first place).

Now a cigarette addiction is one thing, but as far as I know there is no addiction to littering.

So, I just leaned into the train carriage and with the same tone I’d have returned a lost umbrella, called out “Excuse me”. Of course, like a shop thief, she knew what she’d just done. Those who had done nothing turned with questioning looks. “Excuse me”, I called again, firmly and clearly, she turned. “Here”, I said calmly, holding out her stomped out cigarette, “You dropped something”. She tried to ignore my offer and all eyes fell upon the filthy bedraggled rather unglamorous stomped out cigarette in my fingers. She looked squeamish. “I saw you”, I added calmly. Now all eyes were upon her. She took it from my fingertips, looking at me as if I were a madman. I gave her the thumbs up. “I just saved you two hundred bucks”, I said with a cheery smile. Then I left the carriage. As the doors closed I saw her sit in the seat reserved for the disabled (of course 😉 what else would one expect of a budding sociopath) where she opened her stylish handbag and put the butt into it as if handling a dog turd.

As I left the platform I thought about my fingertips which had touched her saliva on the cigarette butt and how people can catch meningitis from carriers after contact with their saliva and I thought about the lowered immunity of smokers and how many germs I’d handled for the sake of my little escapade. At home I washed my hands, the water going down the plug hole into the waterways choked with and poisoned by cigarette butts like that I had just given back.

Donna Williams

author, artist, singer-songwriter, screenwriter

and resident ratbag

http://www.donnawilliams.net