While debates over where you can smoke (almost nowhere) and how much you should (probably never) rage on, a new battleground in the fight between cigarette smokers and anti-tobacco types has emerged: the sidewalk.
Partially because of its place in the smoker's identity and partially as a result of the restrictions regarding where one can light up, the issue of butts littering the street appears to be growing, so much so in fact, that Toronto officials are struggling to come up with ways to fix the problem.
The fact that the individual butts are quite small is meaningless. Environmentalists charge that collectively they amount to a whole lot of pollution and aren't exactly doing much to beautify the city streets they're scattered across.
To put things in a national context, an estimated 52 million cigarettes are tossed onto Canadian streets each year. In global terms, there are those that suggest they're the world's most littered item, a claim with shocking implications given that it takes a single butt an average of 25 years to break down.
"The chemical goes into the air, it goes into the water, it's also deposited in soil," said Ted Boadway, an anti-smoking advocate.
Smokers counter with one simple question: where are we supposed to put them?
And that's the million dollar question without an answer. Boadway suggests arguably impractical pouches on the sides of cigarette packs, while the city has sparingly provided some streetside trash bins with built-in ashtrays that are clearly underused.
Beyond that, there's no word on other municipal initiatives, other than increasingly pleading with smokers to be patient, make sure their butt is out, and find a trash can.