Angelo Lanham

Killing myself slowly is my choice

By: Angelo Lanham

Posted: 5/15/08

Our country is always good for a nice contradiction.

We can sit in our Wal-Mart chairs without ever thinking of the nickel-an-hour Chinese laborers who worked to produce them.

We have the right to a free press, but if we run from newspapers and don't tune the television to CNN, we have the ability to live as isolationists, shielding ourselves from that depressing thing called "the world" while paying stupid attention to Britney Spears' every move.

We can also be exposed to cartoon camels and macho cowboys who make cigarettes look like the niftiest thing since the Charleston, get hooked, and a few years down the line, be penalized for believing the liberally placed billboards and picking up a pack.

Anyone who has read the Spartan Daily - a fine rag if I do say so myself - lately, knows about the impending possibility of a smoke-free campus, led by a group called the Smoke-Free Policy Committee.

The Spartan Daily reported on May 1 that Carole Foster, a member of the committee, said the idea is to make it harder for people to smoke so they won't smoke in the first place.

While I do appreciate it when superior minds have the kindness and forethought to protect the rest of us from ourselves, I'm not sure banning smoking from the campus is quite the right way to go.

There are 7-Elevens on all corners of the campus waiting to sell cigarettes, we've all seen the aforementioned billboards growing up, and the movies have made the whole process look tres cool ever since the days of Humphrey Bogart.

Smokers have already been issued a 25-foot restraining order for all doors and windows, and most of them have complied.

Now, do we really want "designated smoking areas?" What would that even be, some taped-off area in the middle of the campus with about 35 people standing around and puffing their lives away while normal folk pass by, hurling rocks and shunning the ignoramuses?

Moreover, a completely smoke-free campus would mean that anyone who we as a society have allowed to become nicotine-dependent would need to waddle their smoky selves all the way to the edge of the campus for their five-minute cigarette break.

It is understandable that some students are afraid of secondhand smoke. First contact has been known to eradicate entire species of plants. But can't we trust smokers to be courteous enough to keep their clouds to themselves?

The claims I've heard from most supporters of the mundane idea of a smoke-free campus make it sound like smokers are packs of uncivilized wolves, running up to the good citizens of the university and blowing smoke in their faces, cackling all the way.

OK, I'll be fair. Secondhand smoke is bad, and we do have significant evidence that smoking can lead to cancer. Anyone who is nominally literate and understands the English language can collect all four surgeon general warnings on various packs.

We know that it can cause birth defects; we know that quitting now can extend your life considerably, and we know that cigarette smoke contains carbon monoxide. All from reading the precious boxes of cancer sticks.

All the same, these are risks that literate SJSU smokers are aware of. They've read the boxes, and have made their choice.

So if they don't run around like jackals, cornering and eradicating non-smokers with secondhand smoke, what's the problem? Aren't we allowed to bring on our own slow, painful consumer-driven death anymore? What is this country coming to?

I'm almost tempted to patronize the old cliché and compare it to fast food, which is nothing if not abundant (and overpriced) at SJSU's Student Union.

Shall we save the morbidly obese from themselves as well?

That's just crazy talk.

Another tidbit from the article mentions that the committee's slide show contained a factoid that smokers only get 15 percent of their secondhand smoke, while the remaining 85 percent falls on innocent bystanders.

This isn't a problem either, though. Smokers smoke with other smokers. So if two smokers are puffing away a pack of Kools, they will inhale their own 15 percent, and their neighbor's 85 percent, for a whopping 100 percent of secondhand smoke.

Thus, the smokers will kill themselves off and the problem will take care of itself.

The point here is that SJSU students have to be trusted to make their own decisions, whether it means trusting them to not patronize the campus Burger King's "two double cheeseburgers for two dollars" deal or trusting them not to start smoking like all the cool kids.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have two double cheeseburgers, a carton of cigarettes, a fifth of whiskey and some cyanide to consume.