Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 5/15/08 Section: Opinion

Angelo Lanham

Our country is always good for a nice contradiction.

We can sit in our Wal-Mart chairs without ever thinking of the nickel-an-hour Chinese laborers who worked to produce them.

We have the right to a free press, but if we run from newspapers and don't tune the television to CNN, we have the ability to live as isolationists, shielding ourselves from that depressing thing called "the world" while paying stupid attention to Britney Spears' every move.

We can also be exposed to cartoon camels and macho cowboys who make cigarettes look like the niftiest thing since the Charleston, get hooked, and a few years down the line, be penalized for believing the liberally placed billboards and picking up a pack.

Anyone who has read the Spartan Daily - a fine rag if I do say so myself - lately, knows about the impending possibility of a smoke-free campus, led by a group called the Smoke-Free Policy Committee.

The Spartan Daily reported on May 1 that Carole Foster, a member of the committee, said the idea is to make it harder for people to smoke so they won't smoke in the first place.

While I do appreciate it when superior minds have the kindness and forethought to protect the rest of us from ourselves, I'm not sure banning smoking from the campus is quite the right way to go.

There are 7-Elevens on all corners of the campus waiting to sell cigarettes, we've all seen the aforementioned billboards growing up, and the movies have made the whole process look tres cool ever since the days of Humphrey Bogart.

Smokers have already been issued a 25-foot restraining order for all doors and windows, and most of them have complied.

Now, do we really want "designated smoking areas?" What would that even be, some taped-off area in the middle of the campus with about 35 people standing around and puffing their lives away while normal folk pass by, hurling rocks and shunning the ignoramuses?

Moreover, a completely smoke-free campus would mean that anyone who we as a society have allowed to become nicotine-dependent would need to waddle their smoky selves all the way to the edge of the campus for their five-minute cigarette break.

It is understandable that some students are afraid of secondhand smoke. First contact has been known to eradicate entire species of plants. But can't we trust smokers to be courteous enough to keep their clouds to themselves?

Continued...

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