Students should fume over smoking ban (reg cigs/e-cigs/chewing/etc)

[The Straight Story]

Students should fume over smoking ban

Herter 227 lecture hall was filled to the breaking point with occupants, as one student after another voiced their staunch opposition to the “Tobacco-Free UMass Amherst” policy.

...
The policy, being painted as a “smoke-free” policy, is testament of its intrinsically shady nature. The policy does not aim to simply reduce second hand smoke for non-smokers. Rather, it is an ultimatum handed down by the faculty telling students what legal products or substances they can or cannot use during their stay at UMass. The policy bans all tobacco products and even one non-tobacco product aimed at helping people quit smoking, electronic cigarettes. Among the most egregious aspects of the policy are bans on smokeless tobacco and smoking in one’s own personal vehicle while on campus.

..

Reducing second-hand smoke is an understandable goal for UMass, especially in front of buildings. However, university and faculty supporters of the tobacco-free policy have yet to explain why smoking in personal vehicles, smokeless tobacco and electronic cigarettes have found their way into this policy.

The only reasonable explanation for these provisions is that the University is attempting to regulate the personal and moral decisions of students regardless of whether or not non-tobacco users are being affected. These substances and products are legal for all adults to purchase and use. The university and faculty have no right to regulate the moral and health related decisions of adults when those decisions are legal in the limits of the law. We cannot allow the University to set the precedent that regulating and systematically removing the personal freedoms of students is acceptable policy.

http://dailycollegian.com/2011/04/14/students-should-fume-over-smoking-ban/

[SheilaT]

1. As a lifelong non smoker,

I have no problems with bans on smoking.

There is NOTHING positive or beneficial about smoking. Nothing. There is no reason whatsoever to allow smoking in public places.

I personally am quite sick and tired of the defenses of smoking that show up here every so often. Smokers stink. Smokers pollute the atmosphere. Smokers often die from diseases that could have been avoided had they not smoked. What is so hard to understand here.?

[Zanzoobar]

3. I love it!

Cars stink.
Cars pollute the atmosphere.
Drivers often die from crashes that could have been avoided had they not driven.

Cigarette smoking and driving are both voluntary acts. What's so hard to understand?

[SheilaT]

4. There seems to me to be a fundamental

difference between smoking and driving.

I have a sister, 18 months older than I am, who had a major serious heart attack at age 43. That was in 1989. She stopped smoking for a couple of months, then resumed, despite a lot of kickback from family and friends. About four weeks ago she had triple bypass surgery. Surprise, surprise. Now she's trying to caution the younger generation not to smoke.

I have so little sympathy for anyone who has smoked since the Surgeon General's report of 1964 (gosh, that's coming up on 50 years pretty soon) that I am honestly capable of showing up at someone's hospital bed and asking, "What part of smoking not being good for you did you miss?"

It's not breaking news that cigarettes, used correctly, kill.

Driving cars is a whole different category, and in fact the death rate from driving has dropped quite a bit in the last fifty years. Part is the use of seat belts, part is that cars are far better engineered than they used to be.

It's totally stupid that pro-smoking people constantly bring up driving or pollution as if deaths from those things make smoking okay.

[boston bean]

5. people's breath stinks when they drink alcohol and it's offensive

also it's difficult to be around a drunk.

Sometimes it's deadly to be around a drunk.

Drunk drivers KILL.

Alcoholics kill themselves. Laying in hospital beds dying of liver failure

Alcohol breaks up families.

I hope all the little miss and mr. perfects out there don't drink alcohol. Otherwise they nothing but hypocrites.

[SheilaT]

8. Again, to do a simple equation between

smoking and drinking is to do the comparing of apples and oranges.

Yes, drinkers often smell bad. And all too often they cause horrific traffic accidents. Right now in Santa Fe, NM, where I live, there's a trial going on about a drunk driver who killed four teens about two years ago in an accident. The exact extent to which heis responsible is somewhat in doubt, which is why there is a trial happening.

Approximately 400,000 persons per year die in this country as a direct result of smoking. While I am not about to defend driving while drunk, no where near that number die in drunk driving incidents.

400,000. How many plane crashes each and every day would that amount to.

Oh, and only about 40,000 die each year from car accidents.

It's not as though there's a simple choice, should I drink or should I smoke? Both of those are not very good things. But they both need to be looked at separately. Personally, I love to drink. But I NEVER drink and drive. I'll have more than one drink if and only if I'm at home or someone else is driving. I don't smoke. Never have.

[boston bean]

13. they should ban drinking, it kills people.

Not just from drunk driving.

many physical ailments.

I don't care that you do it responsibly.

Many many families are ruined.

No, I don't really think it should be banned, but if you are going to do something disgusting to your body and other people kill people or harm people doing the same thing, can't you see the hypocrisy?

[Abq_Sarah]

9. I'd rather be around a smoker than a drunk

Any day of the week.

[Zanzoobar]

7. Cars used correctly, Kill.

First of all, consider petroleum. That is all you really need to know.

However, the problems are manifold. Simply manufacturing cars and dumping them in landfills would be enough of a problem to overtake smoking in impact.

Driving the damned things is outrageously stupid for mankind. Smoking doesn't even register on the scale.

Well, it registers on the nanny scale.

[Buzz Clik]

10. Can you think of something positive that cigarettes do for people?

Beyond, of course, satisfying a personal need to smoke.

Your comparison to cars breaks apart pretty quickly.

By the way, I am opposed to blanket bans on smoking. I am also offended by really bad logic.

[boston bean]

14. not just cars. liver failure, ruined families....

[TheKentuckian]

15. I am not the arbiter of "good" and neither are you.

The obsession Americans have with dictating the behavior and activities of other grown and free people just needs to shut down and it comes from all over the political spectrum.

We simply cannot be going through every habit and preference and putting people's lifestyles up to votes or the whims of legislators. Many things have little merit beyond personal pleasure that can be demonstrated.

I don't have a desire to police personal habits, predilections, hobbies, interests, or any other way to stimulate pleasure centers.

Where did you get the idea that "good" had to be demonstrated? This whole deal is little better than the Reich wingers trying manage people's sex lives or religion. It is different but still comes from the same mentality. It sure as hell is a close relative to what has people pissing in cups to go sit at a desk somewhere and fills our jails with people who's crimes are crimes because of "I said so" rather than those individuals ever doing anything that went beyond the end of the next person's nose.

Anytime the anti's go beyond protecting their right not to smoke then it is a nanny stater power grab right out of our puritan heritage. People do not have a right not to be offended.

[Shagbark Hickory]

11. And likewise there are places you can and can't drive them.

[pintobean]

12. Offending the nannies is positive or beneficial to me.

When I get on an elevator, and there's a woman with heavy nasty perfume, I feel like vomiting, but I wouldn't dream of outlawing perfume.

[Buzz Clik]

16. However, there are those who want to limit the use of perfumes in public places.

It's truly amazing.

[pintobean]

17. I didn't know that. How silly.

Perfume really does nauseate me. It sucks, but its my problem, not the perfume wearer's.

[Lionel Mandrake]

2. Yes and no.

Yes, it's unreasonable to ban smokeless tobacco, smoking in private vehicles, and other activities that won't affect nonsmokers. But the ban on e-cigarettes is plausibly related to the health of nonsmokers. The effects of second-hand vapor from e-cigarettes are largely unknown. It is therefore premature to say that the vapor is harmless. About all you can say is that it is probably less harmful than regular cigarette smoke.

Henningfield, J.E., & Zaatari, G.S. (2010). Electronic nicotine delivery systems: Emerging science foundation for policy. Tobacco Control, 19(2), 89-90.

http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/19/2/89.extract

[sce56]

6. I smoked from when I was 15 till I was almost 40, I just hope I quit in time and they will not quit

ME!!!!
http://www.tobaccofreeca.com/stages_high_mov.html