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Smokers become targets in possible smoke-free policy
The Standard, Opinion
11/17/2009
Everyone can agree that smoking is any adult's right - my body is my body, and I'll do with it as I damn well please. It's my right as an adult, protected by law, not a privilege.
Yes, it's unsafe. There are something like fifty carcinogens in cigarette smoke. And second-hand smoke is dangerous, too - it's estimated a smoker only inhales 15 percent of the smoke released from burning cigarettes. Second-hand smoke can cause lung and pulmonary disease, and, worse, birth defects in pregnant women. Pretty scary stuff, right?
Right. And that's why most indoor smoking has been banned. In an unventilated area without modern smoke-reduction technology, continuous exposure to second-hand smoke can (potentially) cause serious side-effects. But-and this is the important part-that's for indoor areas. If someone is smoking outdoors, the only real danger lies in being directly downwind from, and within a few feet of, the smoker. Put simply, according to a Stanford study, if you're outdoors, and unless someone is blowing the smoke directly in your face, you're safe.
That means that even current university policy, like not smoking within 50 feet of a building, is already ludicrous - unless you can prove that the buildings themselves can breathe. It also means that if the safety of nonsmokers is the issue, designated smoking areas are more than enough to contain that risk. And yet, officials here are exploring further smoking restrictions.
I decided to call around and figure out why the university would be actively working to curtail the rights of its students. The first person I called was Dean Earle Doman, the man in charge of the smoke-free research process. He passed the buck to our now-defunct university President - whose judgment, to be blunt, is suspect, and largely unpopular among students and faculty.
Doman is just doing his job, but it became evident during the interview that his main contention was that "smoking isn't healthy, and neither is second-hand smoke." Which, as I just discussed, has already been addressed with the current restrictions on smokers.
All-in-all, not a very helpful interview. So I called a few more people - one of whom was Ty Patterson, the man in charge of making OTC a smoke-free campus. I found him to be personable - a great guy - and a man who was passionate about his mission. He offered a few more reasons for banning smoking - the health issues, of course, but also the idea of campus beautification (reducing litter) and the bad influence of others observing someone smoking.
So far as the bad influence goes, that's ridiculous. Seeing someone smoking in a film, or in your home, is much more likely to cause you to try smoking than briefly passing a total stranger. And proper placement of cigarette receptacles has been shown to significantly reduce litter, so that argument doesn't seem to hold much water, either.
Moreover, the complete ban on smoking at OTC forces smokers to either go off campus, potentially risking tardiness, or to sit in their cars and smoke, which does nothing to reduce air pollution or litter, but does significantly increase the risk of disease for the smoker. But, that's of no concern to Patterson. A complete ban is the best way to ensure compliance with non-smoking policy. When I asked him if the successful implementation of policy was more important to him than the health of smokers (a loaded question, I admit), his answer was yes.
To be clear - Patterson has been contacted by MSU officials for a brief consultation, but is not involved in the decision-making, nor is he personally recommending that MSU adopt a similar smoking policy to OTC's. I called him to satisfy my own curiosity. And he's been extremely successful in his efforts - OTC was one of the first campuses in the country to ban smoking, and since then the policy has been copied all across the nation. He should be proud of his success, however misguided I may feel he is.
The potential drawbacks of smoke-free policies are numerous, though. I contacted Wesley Scroggins, an associate professor here at MSU whose expertise is in performance evaluation and employee retention, and he brought up some very interesting points.
A smoking ban won't cause a faculty member to quit, especially in today's job market. But what it can do is inconvenience the smoker, eating into their free time as they walk to wherever they need to go to smoke, and create a sense of discrimination by the university; a lack of fairness or justice, disgruntling the employee. It may not affect their performance evaluations, but could dramatically affect what he called "good citizenship behaviors" - their willingness to go the extra mile for students and coworkers. It can also increase stress and irritability, further affecting those around the smoker.
Further, such policies are discriminatory. Gas-guzzling SUVs, as one of many possible examples, release carcinogens, too, as well as greenhouse gasses, but there's no push to ban those from campus. It would be asinine to do so, right? And it would inarguably violate the rights of the SUV owners. Such a move would never pass - smokers, already ostracized by society, are simply easier targets, despite the health and environmental risks being comparable.
As Kevin Pybas, an associate professor of political science, put it when I spoke with him, "The current policies would seem to adequately protect (students)." Any push to further restrict smokers, especially if it leads to a completely smoke-free campus, is reactionary, discriminatory, and hypocritical, with negligible benefits and numerous drawbacks. It would be, in a word, stupid. Tyranny of the majority.
If you support this push, you need to realize it's because of your own personal biases. It's curtailing the rights of others because of personal opinion, like disliking the smell of burning tobacco, and such bigotry can only be described as shameful.
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