As a child I always enjoyed going to our Bronx beaches and parks with my family. While affluent children enjoyed collecting seashells by the seashore, I remember fondly picking up cigarette butts so we could spell out our names with them. Little did we know of the harms of secondhand smoke and the impact discarded cigarette filters would have on our environment. The facts are indisputable and alarming. Smoking kills more New Yorkers each year than AIDS, drugs, homicide and suicide combined, and the Bronx has one of the highest rates of tobacco use in the city. Secondhand smoke is a known Class A carcinogen. Even brief exposure to secondhand smoke can lead to more frequent asthma attacks in asthmatic children. Cigarette butts are toxic, slow to decompose, costly to manage and growing in volume; 75 percent of the litter found on NYC beaches is cigarette butts, and it takes over a year and a half for a cigarette filter to decompose.