(The following is part of a discussion of the SGA’s proposed smoking ban at The University of Alabama)
There are rumblings amidst the University’s administration concerning what action will be taken on tobacco products, and at their request, the SGA moved to consider – and wisely rejected a resolution – in support of a ban of on-campus smoking.
This begs the question, is it our responsibility as individuals to monitor our behavior, or is it the burden of the society in which we live? At present, our fine university only requests that we stay 30 feet from the entrances to buildings.
I question whether the University has more important things to do. The administration has much to do with the selection of important auxiliary services, such as Bama Dining. Unfortunately, I don’t see many resolutions passing the SGA senate or hear the administration requesting that Bama Dining provide more edible and affordable food options for our students. No, they want to ban smoking.
At the behest of organizations such as the American Cancer Society and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, advocates of bans claim there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke and that bans create a social norm that encourages users to quit and increases the health of our society.
Sadly, it is not the responsibility of our government to establish social norms beyond paying your taxes and obeying the law, and organizations cannot interfere with my rights to engage in legal behavior.
Additionally, the science they use behind the secondhand smoke exposure is misleading. Lung cancer and cardiovascular diseases develop at advancing ages. Calculating the risk of those diseases posed by secondhand smoke requires knowing the sum of momentary secondhand smoke doses that nonsmokers have internalized over their lifetimes.
Such lifetime summations of instant doses are obviously impossible, because concentrations of secondhand smoke in the air, individual rates of inhalation and metabolic transformations vary from moment to moment, location to location. There is no credible manner to gather this information, and the organizations promoting bans have a political agenda that has little to do with your health.
Furthermore, we must consider the absurdity of kicking someone out of outside. To support such an affront, I would like to see a study which examines how much smoke exposure, in open space, causes significant levels of cancer. We already have exhaust from cars, factories, coal and other pollutants of human actions. I highly doubt a test of the air will reveal smoking releases more pollutants than these already toxic fumes, which we make very little effort to monitor or restrict.
Detractors will argue that I am supporting and enabling unhealthy behavior, but I am obliged to ask you to consider the logical end of your ban. Many of the campuses which have enacted bans on smoking have little success at restricting the activity, and the only penalty they can offer are fines or ridiculous referrals to a disciplinary body.
Few students have stopped smoking, and the profit margins of Phillip Morris have not decreased. Yet advocates hail the success of their self-satisfying and delusional measures to restrict legal behavior. If this cause is championed, we will waste monumental amounts of time and resources enforcing a ban on a behavior that groups have no right to restrict.
While I do not condone smoking inside buildings, I am not going to walk up to a stranger outside and ask him to put out his cigarette. We tried restricting behavior by policy and law in the early 1900s; it merely created Al Capone and a thriving illegal alcohol ring.
This smoking ban may produce wonderful feelings of goodwill in its advocates, but it is merely an aesthetic success. You will not prevent anyone from smoking or tobacco companies from producing and selling their product.
The administration needs to find ways to decrease the cost of tuition, books, and increase access to parking, dining halls and affordable housing. They don’t need to meddle in my legal rights, and they will do so with very little success and almost no ability to enforce their regulations.
John Speer is a graduate student in secondary education. His column runs weekly.
Click the link below to read the opposing viewpoint:
Go-to arguments lack substance as soon as ‘personal choice’ puts other students at risk
Leading in today’s Crimson White:
Student organization to host 5k to raise scholarship funds
