Purdue University is moving toward a near complete ban on smoking. This is continuing a trend all over the country.
I have two concerns with this policy. First the ban is based on "concerns over second hand smoke". There has been one study done on the effects of second hand smoke, it was done in the 1970's and has been proven disingenuous; bad research at best. The entire study has been repeatedly discredited. Secondly, I am really concerned about the School's policy of encouraging students to rat out smokers. Tattling is a nasty habit in a 6 year old. It is intolerable in an adult. Snitching is high on my list of nevers. To actively report a wrong-doing smacks of hall monitors and power hungry patrol boys. There is a clear difference in reporting a bank robbery, or murder. But to call and report smokers has the ring of communist and totalitarian regimes. What next are we to report eating of Big Macs to the fat police? Are we going to call campus police to report underage drinking? Should students notify the Authorities that a student in McCutcheon Hall is a closet IU fan? Call the Purdue version of the KGB, my roommate might be having premarital sex! Look, if no one is getting hurt, it is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.
I do not smoke cigarettes. I hate the smell, and do not enjoy being around smokers. I favor a restaurant that is smoke free. When I smoke a cigar, it is generally outside. Smokers could go a long way by just being polite. This oppression is a problem. According to Purdue, cigarettes are so bad they cannot be consumed within 30 feet of anything. I guess we will soon see Purdue students flocking to the rural fields of Tippecanoe County to smoke amidst the soybeans and harvested corn.
If the product is so dangerous and harmful to public health, it should be outlawed, made illegal as crack, marked as dangerous for human consumption as carbolic acid. Cigarettes should be treated like asbestos and black lung. It will not happen, cities and states make too much tax revenue from this horrible, death causing product.
Purdue Students -- stand up, do not snitch. Protest. Smoke in your room, light up in the restroom, burn one in the hallway of the Student Union. Dump your butts in the parking lot of Mackey Arena or Earhart Hall. Stage a smoke-in at Carry Quad. Remember nothing is more satisfying than a childish act of rebellion!
The ban won't pass. PSG (Student Gov) voted against it and the admin said last year they'd only go ahead with a ban if City councils passed it too and they didn't. Its just a trumped up claim the admin is using to get the students scared. Jischke is a bastard.
ReplyDeleteProbem with banning anything for the publics own good is that it smacks of tyranny! This coiuntry should have learned during the days that alcohol was banned that where there is a demand there is going to be a supply. And, the suppliers wil get rich, the public will get a royal screwing because of a shoddy product and higher than need be prices. It doesn't make a damn whether it be tobacco, drugs, alcohol, birth control pills, or fast automobiles that guzzle gas. It is just a basic law of economics called supply and demand.
ReplyDeleteGuy's first law: laws passed for the public good always have adverse effects because only the individual can determine what is good for him/her-not society. Anytime one doesn't not believe tis take a look at the at laws from banning alcohol to social welfare and the currect medicare and social security systems.