Should we take a gamble and have some good `Clean Fun'?
by Beth Teitell

Thursday, March 8, 2001

I was too lazy to throw away my empty coffee cup the other day, so I just slapped a stamp on it and mailed it back to Starbucks. I'm still waiting for my free coffee bean.

Hey, if lottery players can send in losing tickets for a second chance to win, why can't we mail off other junk for prizes, too?

Send in 10 cigarette butts and earn a chance to win time on an iron lung! Ten old newspapers gets you a fish to wrap.

Maybe you were too busy littering to read the paper last week, but state Treasurer Shannon O'Brien unveiled a plan that allows people to mail or turn in 10 losing scratch tickets for a chance to be entered in a second lottery in which you can win up to $100,000.

Like the bottle bill before it, the ``Clean Fun Sweepstakes'' is an attempt to cut down on litter.

Does it strike anyone else that the Lottery Commission will once again be acting as an enabler, this time for compulsive litterbugs?

It's true. Since there's no rule stating that you have to turn in your own 10 losing tickets, one can imagine a world in which cheap scavengers lurk around convenience stores, encouraging players to toss duds on the floor and then scarfing them up.

Joe, why should you walk all the way over to the garbage can? Think of all the money you spend here - they owe you! Just leave it on the counter or drop it in the parking lot on the way out to your car.

When I first heard about the Clean Fun Sweepstakes I thought the lottery would send you a ticket back for the second drawing, and wondered what would happen to those duds? Could you send in 10 of them for a third chance to win, and so on, and so on and it would never end?

Sadly, a lottery spokesman put an end to my fun and informed me that players would simply be entered into the second chance lottery without a paper ticket. More paper, he said, would contribute to the very problem the lottery is trying to fight. Oh, well.

The drawings haven't started yet, but I'm already nostalgic for a world that's quickly disappearing. First those pull-off tabs on soda cans went, then phone booths, now lottery tickets.

I'm worried that cigarette butts will be next.

In Maine, a state lawmaker has introduced a bill that would tack a nickel surcharge on every filter-tipped cigarette sold in the state. To get your nickel back, you have to turn in your soggy, gummed butts at a redemption center.

While the bill enjoys the backing of the Maine Innkeepers Association and those who see the potential law as a moneymaker for the state, the Returnable Tobacco Products Bill has some detractors.

``I have some grave reservations about clerks being required to take back something that has been in other people's mouths,'' a member of the legislative committee considering the bill told a reporter.

I say leave the cigarettes alone and focus on our real problem: all this snow.

How about a program that allows you to mail it someplace. And the sooner the better. I'm calling Fed Ex the moment I get home.