Smoking and the bandits

Published in the Waikato Times.

No ashtray is safe as desperate smokers turn to swiping cigarette butts from porches and verandas across the Waikato.

Social media is abuzz over the mystery of the disappearing ashtrays, after several were stolen from homes in Hamilton, Te Awamutu and Taupo.

The crime wave follows a trend by most smokers to take their habit outside, often leaving cigarette butts neatly piled in ashtrays visible from the street.

One theory circulating on Facebook is that the ashtray thefts are collateral damage - nicotine-crazed thieves are actually after cigarette butts to roll into second-hand smokes.

Among those hit is Te Awamutu resident Lisa Manaia, whose prized crystal ashtray was pinched from her porch last Friday.

An angry Manaia said she now has nowhere to stub out her cigarettes.

"I was smoking as usual outside, it would have been just before the sun went down that I noticed the ashtray was gone."

Perplexed, she turned to Facebook and discovered that Kihikihi residents were also losing their ashtrays. So had someone else on her street.

"Damn thing about it was that they took my crystal ashtray. Now we are sitting out there with our hakatere [run-down] ashtray."

Although she says she doesn't feel unsafe, she still is uncomfortable with the intrusion.

"It stumped me that they want to take an ashtray in the first place. It's disgusting that people are going around collecting butts out of other people's ashtrays."

Claudelands resident Matthew Johns nearly caught some butt grabbers on his property the other day.

"It's not the butt thieving that annoys me. It's the fact that they're snooping around my house uninvited and are complete strangers to me."

He saw a couple of men walk up his driveway and approach the house, before they quickly turned around and left once they saw there were no butts to pinch.

"I didn't click until I went out for a ciggie and the ashtray was empty. If I don't empty it [the ashtray] people sneak right up to my door to raid it!"

Residents thought it was a prank until stories emerged from all over the Waikato of ashtray thefts.

Manaia's smoking area is visible from the road which makes it a prime opportunity for butt thieves.

Te Awamutu Sergeant Chris Greenwood said there had been no official reports of stolen ashtrays but recommended that people secure their ashtrays inside, as they would with bikes and shoes.

Manaia said she did not contact the police over the theft of her crystal ashtray but she intends to report it if it happens again.

However, Hamilton East resident Ashley Baker has found his own way to stub out the problem.

"I have not had missing ashtrays as I fill them with water. Then the butts are useless to them."

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