Brush your teeth, and get to bed on time! Is that where we’re moving next, Mississippi State University? An all-out smoking ban already looms on the horizon. But hold up, is smoking really a problem on campus?
And a bigger question — who is really going to enforce the ban?
We let slip larger offenses like alcohol in dorms and the stadium everyday. Don’t try to tell me those bans have been even halfway effective. Residence Advisers and others try their best, but there are simply too many students to monitor.
Not to mention I’ve yet to see anyone follow the 25 feet rule. Now, it could be that crazy kids these days are lousy judges of distance, but I’m more inclined to think of it as disregard for the rules. As such, if we’re really concerned about the health of our students, we have to work with the system, not against it.
Drew Powell recently quoted the executive director of University Health Services in his Oct. 6 WTVA article as explaining thusly: “We have enabled those people we have provided adequate training to, to be able to confront anybody who is smoking on campus … They respectfully suggest they put their cigarettes out.” In other words, we’re training people to say, “Smokers, no smoking!” That may work on Swiper the fox, but hell if it’ll work on college students.
So is all this hoopla just a colossal waste of time? Granted, MSU has every right to ban smoking on its grounds, just as it has the right to ban semiautomatics and the color yellow. But is a ban the right way to go about things? And what about secondhand smoke?
I have asthma. I hold my breath any time I pass by a smoker, else I must dash off for a date with my emergency inhaler. But it’s only for a second. I can deal. Most ban supporters are not in any danger from secondhand smoke — the real “victims” are too shy to say anything. No, most of these bellyachers are suffering from chronic annoyance, not chronic respiratory failure.
Let’s flip this argument on its head. If people like me aren’t actually being victimized, who is? Try looking at the smokers. Yes, their lungs are rotting, but the effects of withdrawal are more immediately felt. I cannot personally tell you about the effects of withdrawal, but with treatments ranging from patches and classes to anxiety meds and therapy, quitting can’t be pretty.
Because smoking’s a stress impulse, getting a pack-a-day smoker to quit cold turkey may have him or her running to something much worse.
And what percentage of the school smokes? There are no concrete statistics, so we’re going to have to trust our own eyes and our own rational minds. Out of the hundreds of people you pass on the way to class, how many of those do you see light up — maybe seven? Are we but bullying a minority?
I agree smoking is harmful — potentially fatal — to the smoker and anyone living with him or her. Yet this fact is often wildly misconstrued. Inhaling a few seconds of secondhand smoke will not kill a normal person. Those few seconds can’t be worse than the cumulative of pollutants we breathe in a day in our progressive-but-pollutive society.
A few cigarettes a week will not kill a normal, otherwise healthy, individual. The timer on this bomb lasts longer than popular thought is willing to admit. There’s no need to pull a Gracie Lou Freebush. Let’s sit and think for a moment and find a more effective way to discourage smoking that satisfies smokers and nonsmokers.
Because this issue opens the gate to many giants, officials need to handle smoking policies with utmost diplomacy. The most obvious method is to enforce the policies we already have.
Failing that, designating specific areas of campus as smoking or nonsmoking would grant smokers reprieve and warn nonsmokers. Cracking down on littering may discourage casual smokers lacking access to ashtrays.
If you want to talk about obnoxious fumes, how about we do something about that Burger King smell perforating the air every time I hit Hilbun?
H. C. Manning is a sophomore majoring in general liberal arts. She can be contacted at [email protected].