I am not butting out: it’s time to ban all cigarette smoking outdoors.

J‘accuse all smokers of polluting my air intake outdoors. When I’m at a cafe with friends I do not want to be sitting downwind from a human chimney stack producing similar adverse affects to the turbo-generated, tandem-pulse, twin double-flow pulverised coal boilers of an electricity generating power station.

I’m effectively sitting in a foggy haze as my lungs, engulfed by toxins, make me choke on acrid smoke.

And when I’m walking on streets in heavy pedestrian traffic and can’t avoid or evade a smoker in my pathway, and who resembles a steam train, aren’t I still entitled to breath clean, non-nicotine-laden air?

So why is that smokers, already present-day pariahs, assume that just because they are outdoors rather than indoors, they can smoke their lungs until they’re coughing up black blood and produce enough smoke to challenge the output of a Newcastle steel foundry – but at my expense?

We non-smokers have a right to enjoy our chosen environment.

On public health grounds alone I believe we inhabit the higher and healthier moral ground. Overseas studies show such a ban has lowered general heart attack rates by 10-14%. That’s because cigarette smoke alters individuals’ blood chemistry and makes arteries more likely to clot quicker. This leads to increased blood pressure, provoking more heart attacks.

There are also financial contours indicating potential health care cost savings such as reduced ambulance call-outs, defibrillators, operations, surgeons’ fees, nursing, hospitalisations, and lost time off work if outdoor smoking was banned.

Smokers’ exhaust is a death pall draped over the environment.

A cleaner, healthier outdoor environment is more sustainable. Last year 100,000 cigarette butts were washed down public drains in waterways in one capital city alone. Other capitals have similar stories. These butts are highly toxic: they are not immediately bio-degradable, taking about five years to break down, they degrade eco-systems and destroy fragile marine life in sensitive waterways. They account for half the litter in some states, with at least seven billion butts discarded in Australia each year (City of Sydney Council background report, September, 2009 PDF).

Just imagine the money that would be better off injected into the economy in more meaningful ways if we kicked this habit. My local newsagent charges $15.30 for a little, mock-gold, cardboard packet of 25 cigarettes with a fake heraldic crest on them. Smokers’ cigarette purchases send $7.4 billion up in smoke each year and burn a large hole in smokers’ pockets.

I’m short of breath thinking of potential savings if this risible recreation, read addiction, was banned.

“Smoking Kills”’ claims federal government cigarette warnings, but it also kills off my outdoor enjoyment and it kills of my right to breathe cleaner air.

We can’t afford not to ban smoking in public places.

Photo credits: Bitpicture and odwallafemme