News Editor Shane Rice gives a smoker’s perspective on the campus-wide smoke ban.
Shane Rice
– News Editor –
As the semester nears an end, students, faculty and staff are plagued with yet another encounter of: “Should we do this?” “Should we do that?” “Well, what if we do this?”
What’s being discussed is the ban on all tobacco products at STLCC for all campuses. STLCC announced this semester that all tobacco use on campus could and will be penalized after the first of the year. “There will be no designated smoking areas within the property boundary,” according to a press release by Interim President Zerrie Campbell on Nov. 1.
The decision was based on the fact that STLCC tried but was unable to identify designated smoking areas on all campuses. Really? So many issues arise with this kind of decision. Smokers have been persecuted for far too long.
It’s understood that non-smokers shouldn’t have to inhale secondhand smoke or that the litter of butts throughout the campuses is like a bleeding eye sore. However, to state that a suitable compromise for smokers and non-smokers alike could not be reached seems far-fetched to say the least.
When smoking bans started hitting public places like restaurants, amusement parks or even airports, a compromise was made. Restaurants simply said do not smoke in the building and customers would simply step outside for a puff. Amusement parks made it accessible for smokers to go no further than the gates for a smoke and airports put smokers in a glass cube like a pet store display.
All these places found solutions. They found a compromise that worked for the majority of smokers and non-smokers. However, administration said that no “designated smoking areas” could be agreed upon.
Also, stating that all tobacco usage on campus is forbidden is a far reach. This affects people that don’t smoke but chew and people that use snuff. Granted, the percentage of smokers across the country has dropped significantly over the last 20 years. In fact, the U.S. average hovered around 40 percent in the 1970s and ‘80s and did not drop to under 25 percent until the mid-’90s, according to a poll test given by the U.S. Government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But, smokers still have rights, just as non-smokers do.
Organizations like Americans for Individual Rights and the National Smokers Alliance both oppose that governments impose smoking bans and believe business owners should have the right to determine their own smoking policies.
“Solutions can be made without taking away the rights of American smokers,” smoker’s activist Todd Dylan said.
It’s gone too far.
In an interview Campbell said, “If STLCC had not complied, the college and the board would have been subject to daily fines.”
This is almost a form of bullying by the system sworn to protect the rights of all people within it.
Stop taking away the rights and privileges that people are entitled to. If it is a health issue then the investment of a small amount of money could be used in constructing smoking booths for the campuses. There are no liable reasons that compromises can’t be made, and those that state one can’t be reached are not listening to the voices that pay them.
