Smokers should wake up, grow up

As I have written in this space before, cigarette smoking is a disgusting and self-destructive addiction. However, the evidence of smoking in our hills demonstrates pure lunacy.

I am appalled to find butts along the Las Flores Motorway on my weekly walks. The chaparral may still look sort of green, but look closely and you will find the grasses brown, tinder-dry and explosively flammable. Hillside fires in the Southland have already begun to blaze.

Many smokers seem to illogically believe that they have a constitutional right to smoke whenever and wherever they wish. It follows, then, that they also must believe that they have the constitutional right to endanger the lives, health and safety of the overwhelming majority who are nonsmokers.

Smokers, wake up and grow up, drop the awful addiction and stop dropping those butts.

Robert Morrison

Glendale