SMOKERS who blight town streets with cigarette butts should be made an example of with ‘high-profile’ and ‘heavy’ fines, the Constable of St Helier has said.
During yesterday’s Roads Committee meeting, Simon Crowcroft revealed he had personally spoken to police chief Robin Smith about taking a hard line – following years of campaigns to try to ‘stamp it out’.
Mr Crowcroft called for the authorities to ‘throw the book’ at offenders.
Several initiatives – including the ‘No More Butts’ campaign launched in 2021 – have struggled to stop cigarette ends being dropped on pavements and in drains across town.
Mr Crowcroft said: ‘I said [to Mr Smith] campaigns are all very well but what we really want the police to do is to start enforcing the existing law against littering. If that was done and the message sent out with a couple of high-profile, heavy fines – people will stop throwing cigarettes out of car windows and [letting] them gather on the streets. We all know it is a problem.’
He added that Mr Smith had agreed with the principle of so-called ‘exhibition’ penalties being used as a deterrent. The JEP has asked the States police to comment on the matter but had not received a response by the time of going to print.
Mr Crowcroft said that cigarette butts were a form of litter that was ‘dangerous to the environment’ and stressed that the issue was unlikely to stop, unless the authorities ‘actually throw the book at people’. Cigarettes contain carcinogenic ingredients, which can release toxins into water when they end up in drains, causing harm to marine life.
Mr Crowcroft added that he would be working with the States and honorary police to enforce the current laws.
It was also agreed at yesterday’s meeting that Kevin Proctor, a Roads Committee member and one of the organisers of the No More Butts campaign, would continue to ‘champion’ efforts to combat the issue.
Earlier this month, environmental campaigner Sheena Brockie – one of the founding members of Plastic Free Jersey – said that cigarettes were the most common piece of litter found in the Island.
It takes around 12 years for the paper element of a cigarette butt to degrade, while the plastic filter takes much longer.
– Dropping any type of litter is an offence under the Policing of Roads Regulations 1959, but a freedom-of-information request in 2020 revealed that no fines had been handed out in a decade to people disposing of cigarette butts inappropriately.
