Buying your smokes in SF is going to cost you an extra 20 cents per pack, starting today. Why the price hike? So the city can use the money to clean up the cigarette butts you folks drop all over town.
I get the rationale — we need extra cash, and right now it’s popular and correct to beat up smokers whenever your city needs lunch money. And the streets are, indeed, dirty (except not so much in my neighborhood, because the local merchants pay to have the streets privately cleaned, bless ’em). But are cigarette butts really the big trash offenders? Shouldn’t we be taxing dog owners, because the streets are covered in dog mess? Or people who buy coffee in to-go cups, because you see a lot of those on the ground. Or, my god, how about every club in town, because if I’ve seen one club flyer in the gutter I’ve seen a thousand.
It’s not that I’m against picking on smokers. I like picking on people. But why stop there, you know? Let’s pick on all the groups I don’t belong to. I have a list waiting, for when the Mayor calls.