Our university is banning smoking on our entire huge campus, including outside and in the parking lots. All forms of tobacco – free smoking are under the same ban.
People are accepting this with vapid indifference. I find the whole thing pathetic in the extreme.
What is the rationale? It can’t be reducing health insurance premiums.
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No, I’m sure it’s not that. Just a regular American way of releasing tension through piling on the scapegoat of the moment. Nobody wants to talk about the real problems, so instead we’ll make smokers miserable.
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My university banned smoking last year, and I disagree with their rationale (“make you healthier/promote healthy lifestyle”) – honestly, if you live in the US, unless you’ve never paid attention to anything, you know smoking has major health risks, and you’ve made that decision to smoke anyway for yourself. Even if I disagree with someone’s decision [to smoke], its not mine to make, and I tend to live by the “if its not hurting anyone else, you can do whatever you want” principle.
That being said, I fully support the smoking ban on my campus, and it has improved my life considerably. I am really sensitive to some smells. The smell of tobacco smoke makes me extremely nauseous. When someone is smoking nearby, I have trouble breathing, get dizzy and nauseous and generally don’t function. The effects of someone smoking a cigarette for just a few minutes near me can last for over an hour. When people smoke near my workplace on a regular basis, you can imagine how this goes for me… This, of course, violates the “not hurting anyone else” part of the principle, which is why I support the on-campus smoking ban. All that it has done is cause people to walk to the perimeter of campus to smoke, which is fine by me, as it takes them away form buildings and air intakes, therefore minimizing the effect of someone else’s choice on the rest of us.
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So it’s either smokers getting dizzy and incapable of functioning or non-smokers. 🙂
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How do smokers at your Uni cope with this?
Do they leave the campus or do they smoke there anyway?
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Americans are known for being obedient, so I’m sure they comply. And woe be to the students whose prof is jonesing for a fix. 🙂
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We have had this policy for a couple of years. As a practical matter, most campus buildings are not far from a public sidewalk that is not on campus. A few people do smoke on campus anyway, but not indoors. One of our graduate students said the ban was unreasonable.
Indoor smoking was banned in public buildings in the whole state over a decade ago.
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My campus banned smoking the year I arrived. It actually did help me quit smoking, which is good. I have asthma now after many years of smoking. It was killing me quicker than most. It’s been over 2.5 years since I smoked last.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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