Smoking on campus may be legal, but that doesn't make it okay.
We all know the health problems of second-hand smoking. So there's no excuse not to realize that when you smoke on campus you're damaging the health of those around you.
There's no risk-free level of exposure, according to the Surgeon General and the American Lung Association. Even a little smoke can cause cause a lot of damage, including a higher risk of heart attack.
Secondhand smoke causes cancer, circulatory problems, asthma, heart disease, dementia, and lung problems.
In children, it causes death, asthma, learning and development problems, and worse.
It isn't some little thing: 50,000 adults alone die each year from second-hand smoke.
We can't (and shouldn't) stab our classmates, so why is it okay to cause them cancer, heart attacks, and possibly kill them or their children?
There's nothing wrong with smoking in your own home (as long as you aren't exposing anyone to harmful toxins there, either). If you have a desire to end your life soon and suffer through the end of it, it's your choice. No one should take that right from you.
But that doesn't mean smokers can can trample on the rights of others to a healthy lifestyle if they choose.
With many students unable to afford health insurance, we have to be extremely careful when it comes to our health. But being careful with our health shouldn't mean having to sacrifice our education, or vice versa.
Smokers on campus tend to hang around outside classrooms and buildings, making it impossible to avoid health problems if you want to get to class. Even with the distance rules posted outside, you can easily smell (and inhale) the poison that smokers are breathing and putting into our campus' air.
At the very least, smokers could try to be considerate and smoke in parking lots or in their own houses and yards before they leave for school. But even then, scientists have identified "third-hand smoke" that lingers on clothing of smokers and is harmful to nearby non-smokers. While it's a bit much to ask smokers to change their clothing after smoking, it isn't too much to ask that smokers don't drag the rest of us down with them.
People's lives are worth at least a little effort.
Of course it's hard for smokers to abstain: they're addicted.
But if smokers as a group want their rights to be respected, they need to be willing to respect non-smoker rights.
It's in their benefit, as non-smokers won't see a need to suppress smoking rights when those smoking rights don't harm them. And right now, they do.
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