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A lot of street folk would snap these up![/caption]
Doctors have ethical restraints, that don't reign-in bloggers. I have no responsibility to tell the truth or make sense, or keep a civil tongue in my blog. I can suggest hare-brained schemes till the cows come home -- and by all means, let's bring them all home, now! So which of us -- blogger, or doctor, is suggesting putting a one-cent deposit on cigarette butts? Doctor Stuart H. Kreisman, MD Division of Endocrinology St. Paul's Hospital, that's who!
St. Paul's, the hospital right downtown, has been on the front lines of dealing with all the intractable health problems emanating from the Downtown Eastside, for years. So they have credibility. Dr. Stu's proposal was widely covered in the local free newspapers, including the Tri-Cities Now. Doctor Stu feels a deposit on cigarette butts -- just like Pop cans, which have a five-cent deposit value, paid on top of the purchase price at the checkout till -- would mobilize the existing hordes of bottle pickers to clean the cigarette butts off the streets, at one-cent-per -- even though, the Canadian government retired the penny, some months back.
Consider how toxic cigarette butts are supposed to be. Now imagine binners carrying giant bags of butts, through the alleys, the crowded thoroughfares, jostling the bags through crowds. Taking them on the buses to get to a return depot, as they do now, with stinky, drippy bags of bottles. Imagine all this taking place any time during Vancouver's nine-month rainy season.
A so-called "tailor-made" cigarette, which comes out of a real pack of cigs, goes for fifty-cents, as I recall, though a downtownie says they can be gotten for a quarter. So, binners who already pick up cigarette butts to collect the tobacco, would still keep the tobacco. If they could still get a penny for the paper shreds which are left over, then that's a good thing, I guess, but the whole proposal just looks like another case of the "downtown poverty think-tank" running on fumes.
A lot of street folk would snap these up![/caption]Doctors have ethical restraints, that don't reign-in bloggers. I have no responsibility to tell the truth or make sense, or keep a civil tongue in my blog. I can suggest hare-brained schemes till the cows come home -- and by all means, let's bring them all home, now! So which of us -- blogger, or doctor, is suggesting putting a one-cent deposit on cigarette butts? Doctor Stuart H. Kreisman, MD Division of Endocrinology St. Paul's Hospital, that's who!
St. Paul's, the hospital right downtown, has been on the front lines of dealing with all the intractable health problems emanating from the Downtown Eastside, for years. So they have credibility. Dr. Stu's proposal was widely covered in the local free newspapers, including the Tri-Cities Now. Doctor Stu feels a deposit on cigarette butts -- just like Pop cans, which have a five-cent deposit value, paid on top of the purchase price at the checkout till -- would mobilize the existing hordes of bottle pickers to clean the cigarette butts off the streets, at one-cent-per -- even though, the Canadian government retired the penny, some months back.
Consider how toxic cigarette butts are supposed to be. Now imagine binners carrying giant bags of butts, through the alleys, the crowded thoroughfares, jostling the bags through crowds. Taking them on the buses to get to a return depot, as they do now, with stinky, drippy bags of bottles. Imagine all this taking place any time during Vancouver's nine-month rainy season.
A so-called "tailor-made" cigarette, which comes out of a real pack of cigs, goes for fifty-cents, as I recall, though a downtownie says they can be gotten for a quarter. So, binners who already pick up cigarette butts to collect the tobacco, would still keep the tobacco. If they could still get a penny for the paper shreds which are left over, then that's a good thing, I guess, but the whole proposal just looks like another case of the "downtown poverty think-tank" running on fumes.
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