Renee Rosenow

As a Boy Scout, I heard a story about a young camper that drank too much hot chocolate before he went to bed, despite being warned by other campers. Later that night, as was warned, he awoke with a terrible urge to use the bathroom, but didn’t want to go outside to use it. Instead of going outside, he thought maybe it would soak through the thin tent floor and into the ground below. He was wrong and the point of this story is that everybody in the tent suffered due to one person’s poor decision-making. This reminds me of smoking.

I don’t know why the camper didn’t go outside, maybe the weather was bad or he was afraid of the dark. Getting up to go in the middle of the night was an inconvenience, but it was that camper’s own fault. Smoking in the rain or having to walk another 100 feet might be inconvenient or unpleasant, but that is the smoker’s problem. If every hungover college student vomited on the sidewalk in front of Hibbard, it’d be unpleasant and people would be upset. Vomit is disgusting and it smells; secondhand smoke stinks and is a risk factor for cancer, heart disease and many other conditions.

Why do smokers think their substance use deserves special treatment? Keeping faculty, staff and students safe is important and yet there are people creating clouds of second-hand smoke in front of most academic buildings. Why is this tolerated? It seems to me that it would be relatively easy to move the ashtrays away from buildings and have University Police watch for littering.

This brings me to my next point – the disposal of cigarette butts. As I searched the Internet for information on cigarette decomposition, there was a startling reoccurrence of people that thought cigarette butts somehow decayed quickly. Every cigarette butt is different and the conditions they’re exposed to can vary, but the time to decompose ranges from two years to almost twenty. In any event, throwing it on the ground is not a good way to dispose of them.

Unfortunately, cigarette butts do far more than ruin the aesthetic value of the place they’re thrown. A study by the Environmental Protection Agency found that one cigarette butt, placed in two liters of water, leached enough chemicals to kill all the microorganisms living therein.

In other words, cigarette butts damage the food chain. Additionally, cigarette butts have been found in the stomachs of animals ranging from marine mammals to desert birds. Cigarette butts are not digestible, but do contain many toxic chemicals that can harm or kill an animal.

Next, there is the fire danger presented by errant butts and smoking in general. The National Fire Prevention Association reported that, in 2005, 800 U.S. citizens were killed in fires started by smoking tobacco and twice that many were injured. A study at the University of California-Davis concluded that in the United States, 30 percent of fire deaths were caused by smoking and the total property damage amounted to almost one percent of the Gross Domestic Product. For comparison, the U.S. spends around four percent of our GDP on defense, about five-percent on education and fifteen on health care. While preventing these fires wouldn’t directly increase the budget of our government, it is incredible to think what could be done with that kind of money.

On an individual level, it is easy to see smoking as a personal decision that should be made by the individual, with limited input from the public. I agree that it is an individual decision, but reject the notion that smoking should be dismissed as merely a habit or a kind of sub-culture – it is a significant threat to the public. The Department of Health and Human Services found that in 2003, 21 percent of adults in this country had used tobacco products within the previous 30 days. This kind of prevalence is on par with other diseases that are considered epidemic and the health threats to individual users are significant. In 2006, the Center for Disease Control determined that smoking was, “the single most preventable cause of premature death,” in the country and noted that it killed more people nationwide than AIDS, suicide, automobile accidents, alcohol, drugs and murder combined.

In a nation where millions of people are without health insurance and tens of thousands die from the lack of access to health care, it is disturbing to see so many people sacrificing their health through smoking.

Critics will argue that nutrition and exercise are also major health factors and are no different from smoking. It is true that proper nutrition and exercise are important health factors and are too often neglected, but “neglect” is the key word. Smoking is a premeditated act that requires time, money, effort and consideration to be committed; poor nutrition and exercise is an act of negligence, ignorance or both. Some studies have suggested that our health care system relies upon smokers to generate business and my response is that there are just as many studies that show smokers spend less on health care because on average they die 14 years earlier than non-smokers do.

Every year, tobacco companies spend tens of millions of dollars to preserve their industry by lobbying our elected officials. Where does “Big Tobacco” get this money? From the customers, who are drawn in by appealing new flavors and an addiction to the ever-increasing amounts of nicotine in the cigarettes.

Clearly, we need to re-think the equation of what is and is not a threat to public health. Smoking is an epidemic of choices, but one that is strengthened by personal addictions and public lobbying.

I’M SICK OF PEOPLE PEEING IN MY TENT!

Stewart is a senior education major and a guest columnist for The Spectator. “Will Stewing” appears every Monday issue.