It’s not an uncommon sight: BU students lighting up outside classroom buildings or the library, or having a cigarette on their way to class. While many smokers hold to their right to do so, any non-smoker who has received a puff of smoke in his or her face on the way down Comm. Ave might disagree. But with talk of BU’s recent consideration of a smoking ban, the debate is about to get heated.
“I dare you try and take away my cigarettes,” fumes Eli, a CGS sophomore. He raises his middle finger. “Give one of these to whoever proposed that ban.”
BU’s smoking ban would follow a growing anti-smoking trend on college campuses. Four weeks ago, the trustees of the City University of New York voted to forbid smoking on all 23 of its campuses. As of this past January, at least 466 campuses had abolished smoking or at least passed resolutions to do so, according to The American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation.
Should BU jump on the bandwagon? Depends on who you ask.
“I feel like everyone here smokes,” says Sarah, a CAS sophomore and non-smoker. “It bothers me. I would support the smoking ban, but I don’t know how they’d get people to stop. People do what they want.”
In “doing what they want”, however, smokers can affect the health of those around them. Secondhand smoke accounts for approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths per year in non-smokers, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
“I try to walk away from people, so I’m not by someone who isn’t smoking,” says an anonymous smoker, “But it’s hard to avoid.”
Another anonymous smoker recalls an angry encounter with a non-smoker.
“This one guy asked me to put out my cigarette once,” he says. “I ignored him.”
“You can’t tell me what to do with my life,” agrees Eli.
For or against the ban, both smokers and non-smokers reveal a shared concern: how would the ban be enforced?
“I know my friends at DePaul in Chicago still smoke despite the ban there,” says one smoker.
Her doubt in the ban’s effectiveness seems widespread among BU students. Is our large, city-integrated campus conducive to a smoking ban? Where would the “on” and “off” campus lines be drawn?
Still, she admits, “[The ban] would be a really big pain, if it actually was enforced, I’d probably just stop smoking.”
Eli is not so easily discouraged: “It’s my stress release…I’d just smoke quick enough to not get caught.”
With students already up at arms over this issue, it remains to be seen if BU will make its students stamp out their cigarettes for good.