Another right to choose

10/31/08 - Ever since this generation's infancy, and even a century before in some cases, there have been millions, if not trillions of advertisements and promotions telling one the dangers of smoking cigarettes. With all the sweetener additives, burger broiling and cell phone dangers of cancer, why is it that smoking gets all the glory?

It's been crammed down people's throats, so much so that every once in a while a small child will inform a smoker that, yes, these things will kill them; often with colorful adjectives they learned from all those ads and educational materials in school.

Dennis Leary said it best, "You could have cigarettes that come in a black pack, with a skull and a cross bone on the front, called 'Tumors,' and smokers would be lined up around the block."

Like alcohol, smoking butts is just something people are going to do regardless of its dangers, bans and deaths. Though the University of Rhode Island is designated as a dry or moist campus, ask any resident student; it is not a de facto situation.

So why is there a question of banning cigarettes when control of drinking isn't even properly enforced?

Doing this would only cause more headaches and paperwork for the police and security services, which should be concentrating more on the ongoing vehicle vandalism or other safety measures.

There is one prominent study from the EPA from back in 1993 citing the dangers of second-hand smoke that anti-smoking campaigns cite regularly, but it is not backed up with objective data.

When the EPA first published this study, Fact Sheet: Respiratory Health Effects of Passive Smoking, its most disseminated conclusion was 3,000 deaths a year are attributed to second-hand smoke.

Five years after the study was released, Judge William Osteen of the United States District Court of North Carolina found the results to be predetermined by EPA before they actually did the study.

Osteen found that, among other blunders, the EPA members conducting this study:

"Publicly committed to a conclusion before research had begun," "adjusted established procedure and scientific norms to validate the Agency's public conclusion" and "disregarded information and made findings on selective information."

From a completely practical standpoint, smoking indoors is a property damaging activity; as getting the smell out is almost impossible after a while. That's fine, but what about when it comes to the great wooded outdoors throughout our campus?

The objective data suggests the risks of second-hand smoke are greatly exaggerated. If one chooses to take these risks, like they do whenever they get into a car or take a walk on the street, the right to smoke outside should be upheld as one of these risky choices as well.

Though students can't do everything they want, there's no use in banning something that would just go on behind closed doors. Risky behavior is risky behavior, and with all the studies done on smoking, we should respect students enough to make an informed decision on what they do with their body.