Smoking not a crime
The Undergraduate Student Government’s Senate will soon be hearing a proposal to ban smoking at ASU’s campus. This unconstitutional and overreaching proposal is brought before the Senate by the Health and Counseling Student Action Committee. The proposal argues that smoking needs to be banned without considering “smoking zones” or any other compromise. It is overreaching.
Say, for instance, a student lives on campus. Where do they go to smoke? Already the students in Manzanita Hall, and many of the other dorms, have to travel down flights of stairs, across the gated outside area, and then an additional 50 feet from the building’s entrance, but HCSAC wants them to have to travel further, completely off campus.
It is a student’s right to express him or herself however he or she sees fit. ASU is a public university, and thus the University’s property is public property, our tax dollars have built the grounds and buildings, and thus, it’s inappropriate for any proposal to strip students of their constitutional right to express themselves just because they have entered an alleged learning environment.
Keep in mind that smoking is not illegal. Smokers already pay excessive taxes for their cigarettes. (These taxes go to education, schools, libraries, and public health, mind you.) Smokers aren’t doing anything wrong. Why keep treating them as if they have just committed some heinous crime?
The Undergraduate Student Government should vote down HCSAC’s flawed, overreaching and unconstitutional proposal to ban smoking on campus.
Ray Ceo
Undergraduate
