Washington State University’s ban on tobacco is full of hot air

If you smoke cigarettes, I’m going tell you what a lot of folks might not want to: You’re gross.

You smell bad, your clothes smell bad, it’s a gross habit and you’re killing yourself.

You may be gross, but have the right to smoke. You can debate whether or not you should, but you have that right &#8212 unless you go to Washington State University.

WSU has picked up on a collegiate trend of forcing students and staff members to conform to the university’s ideas of how they should live. The college campus, next year, will be tobacco-free.

WSU’s Board of Regents voted on Friday to prohibit nicotine from public places and workplaces at the school.

“Despite some objections, students, faculty and staff, when given the opportunity to give feedback, all expressed overwhelming support for this policy,” said Student Regent Jansen VanderMeulen.

If you already have overwhelming support, doesn’t it stand to reason that smoking isn’t really an issue on campus and this ban is pretty much symbolic?

This is another example of a college campus pushing its own agendas on people.

A college campus is supposed to be an open marketplace of ideas, where you’re exposed to not just concepts, but habits &#8212 just like you have to deal with in the real world. You’re supposed to be given the freedom to make your own decisions, including bad decisions.

Remember, most of these students are getting to live free from most rules for the first time in their lives. No one is telling them when to go to bed or wake up. No one is telling them to brush their teeth, eat their vegetables, what time to return home, who to date or who to be friends with.

This is their first shot at freedom, the kind of freedom you have in the real world. And it’s set up so you absolutely fail and make the wrong choices, yet you’re doing it in an environment where you have some support. Because only when you make some bad decisions are you tested as a person. How you react to bad decisions is what defines a good portion of who you will become.

Here you have a college campus &#8212 a place where you’re supposed to explore your freedoms &#8212 saying “no” to a legal substance because of the health implications. Yet, I’m willing to bet you can buy a ton of crappy food filled with sugar at WSU.

One in five deaths is linked to obesity. Will the college do anything about sugar addiction?

And this is about addiction, which no one seems to acknowledge.

If you want to stop people from smoking, you do it through education and treatment. If you’re addicted to nicotine, what makes you think a campus ban will change that habit? You’ll inconvenience people, you’ll cause them to smoke in private (in secret) and you won’t actually treat their addiction.

So while WSU has a feel-good, symbolic ban, you will also have clouds of smoke from chain-smokers behind the Riverpoint Campus Library.