Apparently there’s a proposal for my university’s campus to become completely smoke-free, except for a few designated areas. As it is, you can’t smoke inside or within a certain distance of buildings. Also, as background info, smoking in bars was outlawed here a few years ago (after a fair amount of controversy). Apart from some concerns over night-time safety in the proposed smoking zones, the debate seems to come down to a clash between the rights of those who choose to smoke to do so freely, and the rights of non-smokers to not have to breathe in second-hand smoke every now and then.

The reason for the ban in bars was that breathing in such a smoky atmosphere is unhealthy (according our weekly student magazine). It’s far from proven that the amount of second-hand smoke on the campus poses a health risk to non-smokers. I suppose it depends on who you hang out with and where, but I could easily go a week without getting an inadvertent lungfull. So, if health risks to non-smokers aren’t a compelling reason for the new policy, what is? Having the university take an anti-smoking stance in an attempt to make smoking seem less acceptable and thus persuade people to quit/not take it up? I got the impression from the magazine article that this was an important motivation for many of the policy’s advocates. 

Problem is, everybody already knows that smoking is incredibly bad for you. We learned it in primary school, again in intermediate, in high school we wrote speeches on the topic ‘Smoking is for suckers,’ and we’ve all seen the pictures of blackened lungs and grotesque throat cancers. You’d have to have lived under a rock for the last decade at least to have missed that message. It’s not uncool to be a non-smoker – most people are.  If you’re not put off by all the health stuff, is the inconvenience of only being able to smoke in certain places on the campus going to stop you? Maybe it will, I suppose inconvenience today might mean more to some people than lung problems and dying young in the distant future.

However, my point is that people who smoke on campus have made an informed decision. A bad one, probably, but an informed one. So is it right for the university to intervene? To restrict smokers for their own good? I’m going to bring in John Stuart Mill here (*feels educated*), because I agree with him and he says it better than I can:

That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

So, unless smoking on campus causes harm to non-smokers (which is apparently doubtful on current information), “society” is not justified in banning it. We can plead and reason with them as much as we like but if in the end they still want to smoke, that’s their choice to make and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Of course there might be other ways in which smoking causes harm to others apart from the smoker: cost to the tax-payer if the smoker ends up sick and needing expensive medical care, pain of the friends and family of the smoker in the same situation… With friends and family, well, I think that’s something smokers ought to seriously think about, but I don’t think upsetting loved ones is a good enough reason to limit yourself, as a rule. Maybe if it was a law that smokers will have to pay their own way for any medical costs they incur as a result of choosing to smoke? I’m not sure how I feel about that. It seems fair but not very compassionate. However, if it is the case that some individuals smoking has a significantly negative effect on others then something should be done about it. One person’s freedom extends only until it bumps into the next person’s. And after all, smoking is not a basic right like food and education. It must have its benefits, given its popularity, but I’m sure most people would agree that things like being able to speak and breathe without difficulty in your sixties and seventies, live a few years longer, and being able to go a day without needing a cigarette outweigh them.

In summary:

1. I don’t understand why anyone, given what is common knowledge about the health risks, would take up smoking today.

2. Unless it becomes apparent that second-hand smoke on campus is harming people, I don’t think smoking should be banned there. 

3. There may well be a case for making smoking completely illegal on grounds of it causing more harm (to those other than the smoker) than it does good.

On a lighter note, ‘Smoking is for suckers’ really was a speech topic for my fifth form (halfway through high school) English class. (Some of you who were there may see where this is going!) You know how in ye olde writing styles, the letters ‘s’ and ‘f’ can look very similar? Like in this amusing example (which I found on this interesting looking blog):

 

 

I probably don’t need to say any more, except that our teacher’s handwriting shared this trait. At 15 this was highly amusing.

 

Good judgement comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgement.