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National Kick Butt Day was in March. It’s a day, according to http://www.kickbuttsday.org, ”that empowers youth to stand out, speak up and seize control against Big Tobacco.”

Sandi Gubel, the Sanders County Tobacco Prevention Specialist, recently took students out to pick up cigarette butts in Thompson Falls. After an hour, the group had more than 100 collected.

According to http://www.truthinitiative.org, cigarette butts account for more than one-third of all collected litter. That’s believable, considering the sad fact that our kids are likely to pick one up at local parks and along local trails when we’re out trying to enjoy beautiful Sanders County.

Gubel said last month that people assume cigarette butts are biodegradeable and made of paper. But that’s not the case. Cigarette filters look like cotton, she said, but are mostly composed of plastic fibers. A study found that after two years, cigarette butts are only about 38 percent decomposed.

Everyone makes choices in life. If you choose to smoke, we hope that you’ll choose to keep it to yourself and help keep public areas free of butts. Kids at the playground should be digging through piles of dirt and rocks, not cigarette butts.