Junior Alex Shoucair, a Hatchet columnist, argues that the proposed smoking ban is not necessary or appropriate for GW.
“GW likes to pride itself on what it perceives as its “live and let live” mentality. This issue will put that reputation to the test. You don’t have to be a smoker (I am not) to be concerned with the direction a smoking ban would take this school. “
Read the full column here.
Commentary from the opinions editors, op-ed columnists and The Hatchet's Editorial Board
Director of the GW Institute for Nanotechnology Michael Keidar spent the last three years developing a cancer cell-killing medical device that he said could revolutionize the disease’s treatment worldwide.
The problem with growing up is that there is always someone telling us we are not old enough. And yet, you would think that as young adults, we would finally be over it.
What’s not to love about graduation season? It is filled with senior send-offs, family get-togethers and free food.
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As camera flashes flickered over a sea of tassels, two Columbian College of Arts and Science professors urged graduates to cast their fears aside and forge fresh paths to success.
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Vol. 109
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Young adults aged 18 to 25 have the highest rate of current use of a tobacco product (41.8 percent) (National Household Survey on Drug Abuse)
Smoking at GW is too broad of an issue to tackle effectively, and the campus is too big to properly enforce the ban. How would you do it? Would UPD write tickets? Would that work? If not, what are they going to do, put people in handcuffs? The idea of banning cigarettes at GW, on a city-campus, is ridiculous and idiotic.
If you are so worried about second-hand smoke whenever you go outside then go back into your apartment and get back into your bubble. It is a more cost-effective solution and we all will no longer have to suffer from your irrational bitching and wining.
If you damn smokers would stop leaving your butts all over the campus, making the rest of us look like white trash, you’d have more support.
Alex Shoucair has seen through the anti-smoking smokescreen.
As long as pharmaceutical companies fund anti-smoking groups we will never live in a democracy. Would anyone promote ‘healthy’ nicotine products and anti-smoking pills with such poor success rates if they weren’t getting paid for it?
There are much more important things in life.
Ignoring the whole secondhand-smoke health issue there are many students who have rooms with windows adjacent to the entrances of the dorms, one of the more popular places to light up. Now should these students ever wish to be able to utilize these windows and not have an asthmatic reaction or have their room pick up the scent of cigarettes then they must wait for an empty front. While it is true a full ban on smoking at GW is impractical it is possible to adjust the layout of buildings to discourage certain areas. From my experience it seems people use the benches placed in front of the dorms while smoking. By moving these benches, in addition to the occasional nearby ash tray further away from the doors it would lessen the impact to the average student.
There is no right to smoke. None. Zero. Please stop making this an issue having to do with civil liberties and other freedoms. Please do your homeowrk before sounding off on subjects. Over 200 colleges and universities have gone tobacco free. Do you really think resistance will win anything? It is inevitable that all campuses at some point will go tobacco free. The littering of butts and exposure to smoking makes all of us at GW look bad. GW administrators owe the student a healthy learning environment. Comments meshing other issues are ridiculous and have nothing to do with this issue. Such erroneous comments just show how little you know. It is a health issue not a civil liberties issue!
As long as cigarettes are a legal product to consume, yes, people do have a right to smoke.
Get cigarettes classified as an illegal substance, then come back and make your argument.
@B
If you are versed on this subject you realize we cannot ban tobbaco on the foggy bottom campus since it is in the middle of the city and it is illogical and impossible to stop people walking through from smoking and then by extension we do not fully control all of the land in the area to stop it. I would be willing to bet you the vast majority if not all of your 200 tobacco free campii are not like GW (in the middle of a city, not owning everything in the area). The best we could do is put limits on areas specifically owned by the campus, such as Kogan Plaza, University Yard and directly in front of the dorms where there is a smaller issue of outside public causing problems. If you want to push the issue the Mount Vernon Campus could quite easily go smoke free since it nullifies all the issues held by the foggy bottom one.
Nice regurgitation of talking points from whackjob internet sites, even including a tobacco-funded study that pretended to find secondhand smoke was harmless–based on interviews from 1959, when no one had even heard the term.
What a bunch of silly, silly nonsense.
Whatever happened to the calibre of GW students? They just swallow whole whatever they read on the interenet now?
Thank you Alex for your article against the smoking ban. Your insight on this issue gives the rest of us hope for the future of freedom in this country! I can go to sleep tonight knowing that there are great minds like yours that are set to take over the next generation. Keep at it, I’m going to need you when I’m older. While you’re at it, please tell someone in the medical wing of your university to please explain why the Banbury Report (Gio Gori) was buried 30 years ago; it could have save millions of lives.
If you can disregard tobacco funded studies then you must disregard pharmecutical comapany funded studies on the principle that they are in it for the money. And you must also disregard any study by the likes of ASH on the basis that they are funded by government health departments who in turn make money from taxpayers, and in the good ole USA from rich white men.
I’m allergic to tobacco – how is it your right to puff your smoke in my face as I try and hold my breath walking in front of gelman? While it may be your right to give yourself cancer, dont take me and my lungs down with you.
Pat if you’re walking through clouds of smoke while knowing you are allergic to tobacco then you need to seek professional help!
Smoking is healthier than Fascism.
People like obviously do not purposefully walk throuhg clouds of smoke– it is forced upon us!
I hate walking to class and walking behind someone who is smoking when I can’t get by them. I have no problem with having designated smoking areas– I just hate being forced to inhale second hand smoke.
I don’t want to die of lung cancer like other members of my family– secondhand smoke kills. I make an active decision not to smoke. I should not have to be forced to inhale.
Show some common courtesy
Also, the cartoon in the hatchet is stupid– the fat guy telling the smoker they’re threatening his health. I am in shape- I run daily and eat well. I think the comic was offensive and misrepresentation
*People like Pat
Pat,
Tobacco allergies are astronomically rare, and always involve contact with raw tobacco leaves, rather then smoke, because the process of burning tobacco destroys the biological components necessary to create an allergic reactions. Either you are a true medical anomaly, or a whiner, who thinks a subjective distaste for a particular smell entitles you to some kind of legal protection.
Second hand smoke increases a person’s risk of cancer through persistent long term exposure, not the occasional whiff of an odor. Every time you walk by a running automobile, you’re being ‘harmed’ far more then when you smell an icky cigarette outside of Gelman. Thank God we live in a country where the rule of law, not the subjective whims and preferences of whiners, define our legal code.
Having a concern for one’s own health does not make one a “whiner.” Nor is our concern born out of some “dislike” of the smell of cigarette smoke-this dismissive and rude comment displays an ignorance of the true issue here. It isn’t necessarily the particular smell that we dislike (though it is foul-something to keep in mind the next time you get rejected at a party), it’s the risk to our health. Yes, second-hand smoke is a real health risk. Yes, it does kill. It may be a fact that “second-hand smoke increases a person’s risk of cancer through persistent long term exposure”-and that’s exactly what’s happening here. When you spend as much time walking around campus for four years as most students do, you ARE subjected to persistent exposure.
So “live and let live” indeed. Meaning: give us non-smokers the freedom to be spared from your nasty, cancer-causing habits. Just because you made the thoughtless and disgusting decision to start smoking doesn’t mean we should have to risk our health so that you can have a ciggy wherever and whenever you want. Grow up.
And regarding the comment, “Pat if you’re walking through clouds of smoke while knowing you are allergic to tobacco then you need to seek professional help!”-Pat isn’t walking through clouds of smoke purposefully. We all have to pass through it to get to the entrance of our common library. That doesn’t seem like a violation of freedom to you?
This comes down to a few students who don’t like the smell of smoke. That’s honestly all it is.
Maybe three people on this campus have asthma problems that would cause such a severe problem with tobacco smoke to create a problem.
The argument that the second-hand smoke from some students smoking outside buildings can cause cancer is absurd. Second-hand smoke does kill. If, and only if, you’re exposed to it enough. Say like living with a smoker. The two puffs of tobacco you may inhale when walking into the library will not give you cancer. Whether or not you know someone with cancer doesn’t change that.
This is not just a health issue. It comes down to whether or not the government can strip us of every right to pleasure we have. Is smoking good for you? No. Is drinking good for you? No. Is chocolate good for you? No. But I’ll be damned if the government or this university will ban me from any of those.
You want to spare yourself every inconvenience of being part of society, go live in a cave. Oh, and everyone who doesn’t smoke cigarettes and supports banning them is in fact fat.
The writer has grown up in a world where their air has been protected by smoking restrictions! They can fly domestically without choking on someone else’s exhaled smoke, eat in a restaurant without “enjoying” anothers after dinner smoke, their clothes and hair don’t smell after a visit to a party or club and the list goes on! Hey, I’m all for the right of an individual to smoke their brains out as long as I don’t have to endure their poisen. Smoking is an optional activity that a non-smoker doesn’t have to tolerate and YES, it is an important issue when it infringes on my rights to breath non-smoke air! Don’t confuse the “nanny state” rules with personal freedom and space. Go ahead and smoke yourself to death in private! Non-smokers have rights too!
non-smokers only have rights in their OWN places be that their home, their business etc… You have NO right on other peoples property to dictate what other people can and can not do. If you want no smoking at your college or designated smoking areas, then get off your arses and do something about it. And yes colleges / universities are businesses and if they do not want to cater to non smokers then they don’t have to!
Actually, Mel, chocolate and alcohol ARE good for you. You need sugar and antioxidants. Furthermore, consuming chocolate or alcohol will not affect the people standing or walking around you as smoking a cigarette would.
I have an idea… I hate walking to class behind obnoxious Jappy girls loudly blabbering away on their Blackberrys. I get chronic migraines that are definitely having a negative affect on my state of health.
In my opinion, this is a disgusting, trashy practice that is “ruining” the calibre of GW students. It is impeding on my learning environment and I demand something be done.
Maybe after that we can ban all cars driving through the GW campus. I’d say there is a better chance I will die by getting hit by a car than by getting cancer from inhaling miniscule amounts of smoke on my walk to class…
Anyone have any more ways we can restrict the student body…i mean make the campus safer
“Tobacco allergies are astronomically rare, and always involve contact with raw tobacco leaves”
This is plain, utter swill. Take your pick of these studies: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?term=allergy%20tobacco%20smoke&search=Find%20Articles&db=pmc&cmd=search
“Thank God we live in a country where the rule of law, not the subjective whims and preferences of whiners, define our legal code.”
Thank God we live in a country where we get our medical information from normal doctors and scientists, and not unfounded random screeds from some agenda-driven internet poster.
@ Antismokers
You will not be negatively impacted by walking through a cloud of smoke in front of Gelman however if you are that worried then just hold your breath for the half a second you are passing by them.
@ Prosmokers
There are some locations where your smoking could cause secondhand smoke damage such as directly in front of dorms where, if a student has a window open, the fumes from the cigarette, while dilluted, can enter the room where it becomes trapped as a scent and a toxin in the room. Therefore it is unfair to those with windows facing dorm front to allow smoking directly in front of the dorms where shifting smokers a couple yards away would negate this issue, in addition to lessening the amount of “whiners” who have to walk through the smoke scent.
Ok first of all, i would like someone to show me just one solid piece of proof that second hand smoke harms anyone who is not a small child. There are so many more things we should be worried about that ruin our health, things that have literally been PROVEN by a study other than one funded by those trying to promote smoking bans.
Second, leave smokers alone already! I mean you’ve already forced them out of most restaurants, made them sit in little boxes in order to smoke, or forced them outside into whatever unbearably cold, hot, rainy, etc. weather there happens to be out there just so they can enjoy one thing that makes them happy. Smokers are alienated enough the way it is without threatening to throw another law in their faces that will prevent them from smoking OUTSIDE while at school.
When will it be enough? First to smoke you were pushed into a small corner of a public place, then outside, and now even that’s not good enough for the whiny non-smokers who don’t seem to understand that if you walk downwind from someone smoking, you will smell it!
And JR, i love your point. The bad thing is, soon cigarettes will be illegal. It’s only a matter of time. Then we’ll have to smuggle them in from Mexico, waste more of the money our country doesn’t have to enforce keeping them illegal, and pretty soon we’ll be sending more troops down to the border so we can’t bring in the cigarettes that apparently more people in this country are for than against.
When will it be enough?