Students need options for smoking on campus, not an absolute policy

%C2%A0

 

 

Students at UK shouldn’t need to argue the meaning of the word “no” in the no-tobacco policy on campus. If there are going to be students, professors, administrators and doctors smoking on campus then let’s just come right out and say it. We tried a no-tobacco policy. It didn’t work.

It has been four years since the policy was put in place. There are signs all over campus and it is in every student’s handbook — people just don’t care.

With such high awareness for the policy, the highest potential for it to make a difference has been reached and if anything, the reputation of the policy’s poor enforcement will only increase the amount of abuse. Smoking and using tobacco products is a lifestyle choice, much like one’s diet, but the externalities of tobacco use are much different. While smoking causes health problems for surrounding people, it doesn’t mean we should extinguish their lifestyle anymore than we should force a vegan to eat a rib eye steak.

The no-tobacco policy is really a suggestion for students and is dependent on their own consideration to others. How about instead of trying to start a territory war with tobacco users, we give them more reasons to be considerate of people. Instead of forcing them to give up their choices, which they are legally entitled to, what if we gave them options to practice their right in ways that had limited effects on those around them?

Designating smoking areas on campus focus the externalities to fewer areas which passers-by can avoid if they don’t like the smoke. Just as we have plastic bag dispensers to keep wet umbrellas from dripping on the floor, what about paper cup dispensers to reduce the amount of chew being spat onto the floor?

I’m not a smoker, and I wish that when I walked to class it wouldn’t be behind a guy who smokes all the way to White Hall Classrom Building. But even I don’t believe in fairytales anymore.

“Few people ever consider, ‘oh this person might have asthma, you can’t smoke here,’” said special education junior Jonathan Wood. “It’s something I think those individuals have lived with and have adapted to because you can’t force people to stop smoking, no matter how much it sucks.”

As a non-smoker himself, Wood expressed his dislike for the habit, but at the same time he said there is no more the university can do to prevent it. Is there a benefit to having a no-tobacco policy on campus that no one follows?

“I think that it sounds really good on a piece of paper to your parents,” said Social studies education freshman Kayla Edwards. “Do I think that it benefits them, the students? That they and the staff respect it? I don’t think so.”

Isn’t the point of university policies to benefit the students and the university community? Why are we continuing to ostracize such a big part of our community with this mandate when we can negotiate peace? Instead of a false label to show off in national polls, UK needs to understand that absolutes never work.

People have justified genocide and terrorism with the Bible and the Quran despite both works absolutely denouncing the killing of innocent people. An absolutely no-tobacco policy on campus will never be fully effective in a state so libertarian and assertive of exercising their rights — no matter how inconvenient they are to other people. Initiatives and options work much better than trying to butt heads like a couple of rams.

[email protected]

Read the opposing column to this issue: http://50.63.25.108/2014/04/15/94327/