Leave the smokers and their bad habits alone

Editor,

In response to James Burbank’s letter (published Wednesday) about smoking on campus: I love cigarettes. I look forward to my morning smoke with my coffee, and relish my post-lecture smoke break along the Yale benches or near Zimmerman. Lighting up is the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do at night.

But I’m not delusional enough to perceive this habit as an act of rebellion against “The Man.” In fact, we smokers are basically fellating “The Man” every time we buy a pack of smokes.

But whatever seeming imposition Burbank is making on us by asking us to simply obey campus rules is nothing compared to the imposition we’re making on our own lives, pocketbooks and health.

I’m not here to preach against smoking itself — as I’ve said, I am a devoted smoker and, frankly, have no plans to quit any time soon — but I feel at least we need to be realistic about our habit and stop thinking of ourselves as a noble dying breed, except in the most literal sense: Rod Serling died at 50 from heart problems exacerbated by life-long chain smoking. Humphrey Bogart, the exemplar of mid-century suave, died of esophageal cancer.

We prove nothing meaningful by disregarding rules limiting smoking, except maybe that we’re chumps who have bought, hook, line and sinker, the outdated idea that a smoking habit is a sort of chic subversion.

Now, nonsmokers need to be less combative as well. Nonsmokers often glower at smokers who are within the designated smoking area, or walk THROUGH the designated smoking area when they could easily avoid it, and take the opportunity to fake exaggerated coughing fits or talk loudly with their friends about how stupid and disgusting smoking is. This behavior encourages the idea that smoking is a nonconformist act, and is also, frankly, just obnoxious. It’s not on the level of the smokers who have cursed at Burbank or spit on him, but it’s still an antagonizing act.

No one likes the idea of being told what to do. But we smokers are on the receiving end of a valid paradigm shift in which smoking has gone from part of the American way of life to being associated to a nastier and less respected sort of folk. This is as it should be. There is valid reason for us to be discouraged from smoking, and it is perfectly natural as a measure for the overall health and enjoyment of the campus as well. We need a smoking area at or around Dane Smith hall, true, but I doubt anyone is so highly inconvenienced by the locations of the other smoking areas that they simply can’t go there to smoke. Doing otherwise is, at best, “overweening self-focus,” as Burbank so aptly put it, and, at worst, a proud denial of a foolish and disgusting addiction.

Johanna Orand
UNM student