It might not be so bad except that most commercial cigarettes are filtered - and those are mostly made out of fibreglass. Things are built out of fibreglass when you want them to last for a damn long time.

One of the things that interesting about this (now that I'm thinking about it) is that I often see cigar smokers putting out a cigar and tucking the unsmoked portion back into a pocket or package. Cigarettes, otoh, have tons of ingredients (like saltpeter) specifically added to prevent them from going out easily.