Friday, September 9, 2011

University Right To Ban Smoking

Not much good, if any, can come from an addiction to smoking cigarettes manufactured cigarettes. How anyone could claim differently is a mystery.
The tobacco itself isn't necessarily the culprit. Smoking "pure" tobacco, in moderation and on celebratory occasions, or drinking alcohol at the same moderate levels, might even be considered by some as a good thing.

And for the moment, let's not even get into the claims of medicinal marijuana alleviating chronic pain. It might very well, but the legality of it in some states should remain confined to the home.
The contents of a cigarette are, in a word, deadly, with more than 4,000 chemicals - 43 known to cause cancer and 400 others listed as toxins.
A dirty laundry list of the worst stuff being sucked into lungs is scary: nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, ammonia, cyanide, arsenic and DDT, a synthetic pesticide. The smoke cigarettes from discount cigarettes puffed in large numbers can be a lethal poison for the smoker and those around him/her.

The University of Mary made the right decision with its new smoke-free policy.
Some might suggest the policy is too restrictive. Some will claim officials should be more concerned with alcohol usage. They might claim no one complains when pesticides and herbicides are sprayed on genetically-altered foods.

One online commenter felt smoking cigarettes on the U-Mary campus could be justified since students pay $15,000 a year and should not be told what legal activities they can or can't practice.
"I don't understand, and never will, who owns and makes decisions about the outside air," she wrote.

The air belongs to everyone and cigarettes online are legal. But is it a moral activity?
The University of Mary is a private, Catholic university.

While so many health arguments can be made to support smoking cigarettes bans and tobacco-free zones, U-Mary doesn't need to rely on any of those for its justification.
Its mission statement reads, in part: "the University of Mary is distinctive in our education and formation of servant leaders with moral courage, global understanding, and commitment to the common good. The University of Mary exists to serve the religious, academic and cultural needs of the people in this region and beyond."

That is all the justification
U-Mary needs to ban tobacco on campus - and U-Mary doesn't need voter approval to make a determination that smoking cigarettes is not "right conduct" - the moral argument.

It has every right to institute a policy that bans on-campus smoking cigarettes, and it shouldn't be hard to understand that there can be different rules and standards for public and private places and institutions.
Bans of public smoking cigarettes, wherever, are becoming the norm.

Society, as a whole, thinks it is a good thing. So be it.

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