Push to Label Cigarette Filters as Toxic Waste

Researchers at San Diego State University are asking that cigarette filters be labeled as toxic hazardous waste.
  The "San Diego Union-Tribune" quotes Tom Novotny, a public health professor at the university as saying "It's another way of looking at cigarettes as a societal hazard." He said reframing the butts as toxic hazardous waste, quote, "that adds another opportunity to change the social acceptability of smoking." A fellow professor of public health, Rick Gersberg, created an experiment involving soaking used cigarette filters in water for 24 hours.He then put fish in that water. Within five days, half had died.
Smokers rights groups aren't impressed with the effort.
Robert Best, regional director of Citizens Freedom Alliance calls the toxic waste labeling suggestion "just another attack on smokers and an attack on the entire tobacco industry." He said the issue is already covered via littering laws.
Those laws mandate expensive punishment for anyone caught throwing trash on the ground or in the water and that includes cigarette butts.