Defending the smokers

The Editorial Board’s proposed anti-smoking policy would have forced us to schlep 20 feet away from any University buildings prior to lighting up our celebratory cheap cigars. The walk away from Joline Hall wouldn’t have been too arduous. But as someone who isn’t even a regular smoker, I resent the Editorial Board’s suggestion. I put a premium on all my liberties, even the ones that I don’t take advantage of frequently. As I see it, such requests for University intervention stem from a desire to avoid dealing with the issues at hand on an interpersonal level.

First, let’s assess the Editorial Board’s reasoning for the request. “Many students,” they write, “barred from smoking indoors, simply step outside and smoke directly next to or in close proximity to the entrance of the building. This can be a source of potentially unavoidable exposure to secondhand smoke for students wishing to enter the building.” The board also notes that in the United States, there are 50,000 annual deaths attributable at least in part to second-hand smoke. This is a scare tactic. Second-hand smoke is unhealthy, but a moment’s inhalation as one walks through a door won’t give a healthy student a heart attack or carcinoma 20 years later.

That is not to say that second-hand smoke is safe. But the more significant risk is in frequent exposure over the long term, not “a whiff of smoke now and then,” as the Editorial Board phrases it. So I’ll play devil’s advocate and lay out a more troublesome scenario. A frequent smoker might stand outside the same dorm room window every day, creating a source of long-term, frequent exposure to second-hand smoke for those within the room. Even setting aside the health issues, the consistent smell of smoke through the window would be a legitimate gripe for residents.

But the push to enact a University policy in response to such situations is a passive-aggressive way to tackle the issue. There’s a far more natural solution: If students don’t want to smell second-hand smoke, they’re free to talk to the smokers about it. In my experience, other Princeton students tend not to bite when approached. By and large, I think it’s fair to assume that most smokers would gladly move away from a particular window or entryway if asked. Surely some students would prefer not to interact with the offending smokers, but frankly, that’s a pathetic excuse. It’s simply not the University’s role to speak up for us to our peers when we’re too shy or lazy to do so ourselves.

Of course, for every rule, there’s an exception, and if there are 99 smokers on campus who would move when asked, then there might well be one who would refuse. So we might entertain the notion that this case, where asking nicely just wouldn’t work out, would justify the smoking restriction. But these rules shouldn’t be designed based on very unlikely scenarios. It is overkill to call for a universal prohibition, enforceable on all students by Public Safety, to prevent the rare, bizarre case of a particularly stubborn smoker whose favorite spot is right by an open window.

Whether my roommate and I can repeat our Black & Mild celebration outside our dorm room this year is of little consequence. But we should be wary when told that a problem is so important that we need some outside authority to resolve it. Not every issue we face in our lives deserves a policy response. When we condition ourselves to rely on outside authorities — be they a school’s administration or the government — to resolve our own social dilemmas, we sacrifice some level of personal freedom. I hate to see fellow Princetonians inculcate in each other such a mindset.

Jacob Reses is a sophomore from Linwood, N.J. He can be reached at jreses@princeton.edu.