Give Duluth's Greater Downtown Council credit for doing the dirty work -- and kicking butt. Today, the council dispatches its Clean and Safe Team to bring back the cigarette litter cleanup it piloted in 2006.
Along with picking up butts, team members will encourage smokers to properly dispose of their litter while giving them the tools to do so. Smokers will be offered free pocket ashtrays and directed to strategically placed stationary receptacles while gently being told the street or sidewalk isn't the place for butts.
The program, which saw a 30 percent reduction in cigarette litter on First Street in 2006, will take on Superior Street in Old Downtown and Lake Avenue in Canal Park.
"What's different this time is we actually received some dollars to assist us," Kristi Stokes, the council's president, told the News Tribune's editorial page staff yesterday of $3,000 from Keep America Beautiful, which also will provide 2,000 pocket ashtrays. Last time, the national beautification group provided 1,000 pocket ashtrays.
Commendable efforts all, but just as a doctor knows to treat the ailment, not the symptom, can't something be done to discourage smokers from even thinking about tossing a butt in the first place? Isn't there a law against littering?
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"There are two of them," Duluth City Attorney Bryan Brown said, citing a state law and city ordinance that specifically prohibit tossing cigarette butts. "The city one has a maximum $1,000 fine. The state is a $300 fine. Plus, there's the trip down to the courthouse."
Brown said he hasn't seen such an arrest in years, but a surprise police dragnet descending on one of the several sidewalk cancer clubs in town just once or twice a year would do wonders to send the message that smoking and littering don't pay.
At $1,300 per butt, it'll buy a lot of pocket ashtrays.
