COLUMN: Everyone head for the 'smoke-easy'
By: Matthew Blackham
Issue date: 12/6/06 Section: Opinion
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I echo the famous words of George Santayana when he said that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. I fear that the anti-tobacco movement is following the same failed path that the temperance movement did in the last century. I am not a smoker; I do so out of my own choosing. As I have explained in a previous article on the same topic, I do not contest the negative health effects of smoking. I hate to hit the same issue again so soon, but after attending the Student Wellness Center's Tobacco Task Force meeting last week, I feel the need to do so.
The task force was very polite and gracious and I hope to continue to attend their meetings in the coming months. Right now they are drafting changes to university policy to include a complete ban on tobacco sales on campus and designating the TSC Patio as a smoke-free environment.
Banning sales and further restricting areas in which people can smoke is less an issue about health than it is forcing individuals to quit by continually restricting their ability to choose. Every time I expressed concern for the smoker's right to light up, they assured me that they were only looking after the best interests of non-smokers and that all individuals could smoke as long as they did so within the certain restrictions. When I suggested that the university designate or build a smoking area that followed those restrictions and allowed smokers to sit down in a dry area, my idea was shot down because it somehow fostered smoking.
They spoke of breaking up the smoking cliques and isolating individual smokers in an attempt to make them less comfortable to light up no matter where they are. They also championed Salt Lake City's recent ban on smoking in parks and public places and Belmont, California's complete ban on smoking as the kind of success that they would like to attain. How long until we ban tobacco altogether and turn these individuals into illicit drug users who huddle in confined smoking dens like the speak-easies of yesteryear?
The task force was very polite and gracious and I hope to continue to attend their meetings in the coming months. Right now they are drafting changes to university policy to include a complete ban on tobacco sales on campus and designating the TSC Patio as a smoke-free environment.
Banning sales and further restricting areas in which people can smoke is less an issue about health than it is forcing individuals to quit by continually restricting their ability to choose. Every time I expressed concern for the smoker's right to light up, they assured me that they were only looking after the best interests of non-smokers and that all individuals could smoke as long as they did so within the certain restrictions. When I suggested that the university designate or build a smoking area that followed those restrictions and allowed smokers to sit down in a dry area, my idea was shot down because it somehow fostered smoking.
They spoke of breaking up the smoking cliques and isolating individual smokers in an attempt to make them less comfortable to light up no matter where they are. They also championed Salt Lake City's recent ban on smoking in parks and public places and Belmont, California's complete ban on smoking as the kind of success that they would like to attain. How long until we ban tobacco altogether and turn these individuals into illicit drug users who huddle in confined smoking dens like the speak-easies of yesteryear?
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Custom Blends
posted 6/27/07 @ 12:41 PM MST
A short cruise through the smoking forums on topix provides a lot of backup for your take on the issue.
Many pro-ban posters howl in protest at anyone who properly frames the issue in terms of freedom vs unnecessary government intrusion. (Continued…)
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