I recently received an email about the initiative to create a “Tobacco Free OHIO” and personally, I was shocked. At an institution in which students are thought to have a reasonable amount of agency, it is ridiculous that the university would try to impose such a vague standard of “tobacco free” on its students. Secondhand cigarette smoke has its dangers, but to ban smokeless tobacco, electronic cigarettes (which have no verified empirical evidence for secondhand smoke dangers) and hookahs (no significant difference between a light smoker and a non-smoker, health-wise) campuswide is abhorrent even to this non-smoker. Not to incite a slippery-slope fallacy, but what’s next? A campuswide fast food ban? The university should deal with safety, academics and community (among other core principles), not policing the personal, private choices of anyone who sets foot here. I understand providing resources to help students quit smoking and I understand the right of non-smoking students not to be introduced to secondhand smoke unwillingly. However, subjecting all students who use tobacco products to this policy by forcing them off campus is a poor move. I’d like to hear the reasoning behind this initiative; it better be pretty good.
Daret Spradley is a sophomore studying sociology.
