By Mark Wadland
Electronic cigarettes, a tobacco-free product used as an alternative to traditional cigarettes, was included in the tobacco ban on campus implemented last year.
These E-cigarettes, as some call them, emit much less of an odor than standard cigarettes. Additionally, the policy on campus dictates that tobacco is not permitted on campus – e-cigarettes do not contain tobacco. Why, then, did FSU ban them?
In my mind, this only encourages more smoking.
If you tell someone not to do something, the Erst thing they’re going to do is whatever they’re not allowed to do, just as is the case with illegal drugs. So it is with e-cigarettes.
I understand e-cigarettes have negative health effects, perhaps as many as traditional cigarettes, but I feel the right to put whatever you want inside your own body – an unalienable right, in my mind – is being violated.
How many policies regarding a person’s right to do with his or her body as he or she wishes will be initiated before society realizes how futile and un-productive they are?
Whether or not people like them, e-cigarettes do not contain tobacco, and thus, they should not be banned on campus.
I do not believe they’re harmless, but if they help students relax after a class or a long day and they don’t affect the lives of other students, why should they be banned?
The least FSU could do is allow designated smoking areas on campus for e-cigarette smokers, just as many companies around the U.S. do.