I live in a country where smoking has generally been on the decline for a while now but even still I see thousands of cigarette butts in just about any public place. They litter the sides of the road, bus shelters, alleyways, outside clubs, bars and pubs, public toilets, park benches and just about everywhere else. Its even extending to disposable vapes now as well.
For the most part, where I live doesn’t have that much of other kinds of litter about and is generally clean. And most public bins and all smoking areas have ashtrays and dedicated cigarette bins so it wouldn’t be hard to dispose of them properly like any other piece of rubbish and even then there’s often cigarette butts within sight of the bins and ashtrays.
Why then do people have a completely different approach for cigarettes?
To add to this, it’s also modeled in our media.
Characters be flicking them everywhere, pitching them to the ground and decisively tamping them out with their foot, because that is what being cool and tough is about. The only time someone is depicted properly disposing of a cigarette is if there’s an ash tray they smish it in, preferably next to a glass of hard liquor or a beer.