I’m going to preface my argument by saying my father is a heart doctor. Growing up he would threaten that if I ever started smoking he would take me to see one of his patients who was in critical condition from smoking. Therefore, I would personally never smoke. However, it is unfair for Northeastern to limit their students who do smoke.
Lets face it; I would have known smoking is bad for you even if I didn’t have parents that were so fiercely against it. Why? Because in this day and age schools and the media make the facts widely available and virtually drill it into your head. Northeastern banning smoking on campus won’t cause everyone to quit, because at this point they would have by now (or they wouldn’t have started to begin with). Limiting students’ freedom (smokers and non-smokers) will only lead to resentment for such a strict regulation. The not-so-subtle way Northeastern is essentially lecturing its students about the ills of smoking is the equivalent of your parents repeatedly telling you to clean your room; the more they ask you, and the more irritated they seem, the less you want to do it. Furthermore, if Northeastern is trying to send an anti-smoking message then they should do it in a way that doesn’t limit anyone’s freedoms by making resources to help students quit more widely available.
Also, seeing as this won’t make most smokers want to quit, let’s think logically for a second. These students are going to have to go off campus to take a quick smoke break, and will in turn probably be late for class. This is not only unfair to the professor and other students in the class, but also for the smoker who didn’t want to be late for class but needed to appease his/her addiction to be able to focus. Not to mention campus runs through a very public part of Boston (i.e. Huntington Ave.) so every time a non-Northeastern citizen walks through that part of campus with a cigarette he/she is liable for a fine, even if that person might not know about the policy.
On the other hand, I do see how annoying it is when you are walking outside of a stuffy lecture hall only to be greeted with the thick pollution of cigarette smoke rather than fresh air. However, that doesn’t mean the whole campus needs to be smoke free. Let’s allow the smokers designated areas where they can smoke and ban it from certain distances near classrooms and dorms. That eliminates the unpleasantness of being forced to be around cigarette smoke and still respects the choices some Northeastern students, and faculty, have made about smoking. Limiting smoking, not fully, but enough to make Northeastern a cleaner environment, will still make a huge difference. Also, the more delicate hint might actually motivate smokers to quit, especially those that want to but need that extra incentive
According to the policy “Northeastern University strives to provide a safe and healthy environment in which to teach, learn, research, live, and work.” By banning smoking on campus they are not achieving this because they are only making those who have made a certain choice feel uncomfortable in their own learning environment. Limiting, but not banning, would be a less extreme way of creating this healthy environment. Not only would it (in the words of the policy) “promote individual and community health; and will recognize employees’ right to work in a smoke-free workplace” but it would also respect the right of the American citizen to make the decision to smoke or not to smoke.