Clean Up Britain is running an anti-cigarette litter campaign in Bristol.
No problem with that. Forest has taken a keen interest in the subject for years on the grounds that smokers ought to take greater care when disposing of their butts, although local authorities that don’t provide cig bins must also bear some responsibility.
If we have concerns about some campaigns it’s the tone which can often come across as anti-smoking if not anti-smoker. For example, the Clean Up Britain campaign has a poster that reads:
Bristol’s had enough of selfish flickers
Tag-line:
Get your butt off our streets. Bin it.
Another poster screams:
Stupid flickers kill fish
Language like that really isn’t helpful, or original. Keep Britain Tidy ran a campaign a few years ago with the joint slogans ‘Flicking Blue Murder’ (which made very little sense, even in context) and ‘Bin The Butt’ (which was fair enough).
I wrote about it here, advising KBT to drop the 'Flicking Blue Murder' slogan:
One slogan (Bin The Butt) is quite enough and if KBT want to get smokers onside without alienating them even further, accusing an already beleaguered minority of "poisoning our oceans" is probably not the way to do it.
Instead, by … screaming 'blue murder' at those who smoke, all KBT has done is confirm what many smokers already think – that Keep Britain Tidy is really just an offshoot of the multi-billion pound tobacco control industry that won't rest until every one of Britain's 7-8 million smokers has been bullied or shamed into quitting.
What amuses me about these campaigns is the self-conscious attempt to be ‘edgy’. Flickers/fuckers, geddit? It’s like a teenager has been put in charge and he wants to 'shock' his adoring parents.
Underlying it though is a wholly unnecessary level of aggression bordering on hate:
Bristol’s had enough of selfish flickers … Get your butt off our streets.
Few people, in my experience, are persuaded by personal abuse, even in a ‘good’ cause.
Imagine moreover if a member of the public, encouraged by the poster, decided to approach a smoker who has dropped a cigarette butt:
Bristol’s had enough of selfish f******* like you … Get the f*** off our streets.
To be clear I don’t condone littering (I hate it when I see people drop litter in the street or chuck rubbish out of car windows, for example) but I do think there’s a fine line between inciting hatred of litter and inciting hatred of smokers and this poster arguably crosses that line.
Smokers of course are an easy, visible and often stationary target. They are also a minority whose habit is considered by some to be just as bad as the butts they leave behind.
Meanwhile it's worth pointing out that the Clean Up Britain campaign is (or was) supported by Philip Morris, a company that never knowingly undersells its opposition to smoking despite making billions globally from adults who choose to smoke their products.
Supporting an anti-litter campaign is good. Supporting a campaign that demonises your own customers as ‘stupid flickers’ is not.