Zach Patton is a GOVERNING senior editor. He writes about a range of topics, including education, social policy issues, and urban planning and design. Patton is also the editor of GOVERNING's Management e-newsletter.
E-mail: zpatton@governing.comUnintended Consequences
As cause-and-effect scenarios go, this one should have been easy to predict: Pass a smoking ban, and more people will smoke outside. If more people smoke outside, you're going to have more litter on the sidewalks.
A no-brainer.
And yet, this Seattle Weekly story from a couple weeks ago is the only article I've come across discussing the increase in outdoor trash after the imposition of an indoor smoking ban.
I wonder whether this just hasn't been reported on in other cities with bans, or whether -- for whatever reason -- it hasn't been a problem elsewhere.
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