Column by Seth Thomas

Alas, the leadership of our fine university has proposed a campus-wide tobacco ban. I would say smoking ban if it were not for the ban on chewing tobacco as well, which I’m told is meant to prevent chewers from getting second-hand tobacco juice in the eyes of innocent bystanders. If we continue on our current course, in 10 years you will be able to hold up a bank with a cigarette by merely threatening to light it and choke the tellers and patrons to death with second-hand smoke.

I’d like to see someone make a cogent argument against the ban, but thus far I have seen nothing of the sort, save passing references to a vague and amorphous set of individual rights. If such rights do exist, where are they enumerated, what authority upholds them and how do they purport to protect smokers?

When I asked a few smokers to rebut the proposal, they were sheepish at best. Faced with an apparently bullet-proof argument advanced by the non-smoking do-gooders, they folded faster than Poland in 1939. Few seemed to care at all, and those that did care could present no persuasive argument. Some even said that they might stop smoking because of the ban. What a bunch of quitters!

For example, two nursing students, smoking in the rain on the north side of Huguelet Drive (in order to comply with the medical campus ban), were submissive when confronted with the prospect of the Orwellian regulation. One of them, after taking a long drag on her Virginia Slim and blowing a cloud of smoke in my face, told me she would altogether stop smoking on campus. I thought to myself, “Wow, pretty soon no one will be around to blow aromatic toxic clouds in my face, and that will be very sad indeed.”

But how shall this ban be enforced? Is Ellen Hahn, the anti-smoking demagogue of the nursing school, going to roll up with UK Police belching their own toxic fumes from their overpowered Dodge Chargers to rendition anyone suspected of smoking on campus, and give him or her two days of the black hat and water boarding treatment, complete with 24 uninterrupted hours of interrogation, and then charge them with misdemeanor trespassing?

I’d like to think the smokers will oppose this ban vigorously, despite all evidence to the contrary. I find it so appealing that I catch myself wistfully dreaming of a secret society of smokers who are plotting at this very instant to commit an act of smoker terrorism by staging a sit-in/smoke-out in Lee Todd’s house. But I fear I expect too much, and that the only sign of resistance will be the littering of the sidewalks along Limestone with cigarette butts, since those sidewalks are clearly under the jurisdiction of the city and therefore are open to all smokers. Though no one will be allowed to smoke on campus, at least the non-student commuter population will be able to enjoy the swath of cigarette butts and trash that will encircle our campus.

In order to avoid pure cynicism, I feel obligated to propose my own alternative to the ban. If secondhand smoke is the main problem, perhaps we could have the engineering school design a gigantic chemical fume hood under which the rebellious smokers could stand and partake of their dangerous drug. Since the university is in a budget crisis, we could reduce costs by employing non-unionized Bluegrass Community and Technical College students at lower wages to construct the monstrosity. And if sufficient funds are still available, we can include a decontamination shower for those leaving the smoking area, so as not to allow them to infect the rest of us with the newly discovered, yet highly deadly, thirdhand smoke.

Since I possess an irrational desire to root for the underdog in most situations, I believe I’ll show my solidarity by taking up smoking. But I won’t start quite yet. I’m scheduled to run a half marathon over Spring Break, and I’ve heard some unsubstantiated rumors that smoking isn’t conducive to proper training. So first I’ll train, and then my protest will begin by running the entire race with a lit cigarette hanging out the corner of my mouth, puffing on it the whole way to annoy the other runners, because I have rights, man.