Spare the dirty glares, cigarette smokers aren’t lepers

  Ariana Brookes Brookes is a third-year
English student who mourns the loss of flannel and River Pheonix.
E-mail her at [email protected].
Click Here for more articles by Ariana Brookes

Ahhh. I take a drag on my Parliament light, and everything seems
a little bit better. Another beautiful morning at UCLA. The sun is
shining, the birds are chirping, and the squirrels are scrounging
about. It is 9 a.m., and as I walk down Bruin Walk, bemoaning my
fate of a day full of classes. I look up and see another student
looking at me like I just killed her mother. She takes a moment to
glare at my cigarette before walking by. “Wow,” I say
to myself, “People treat smokers like freaking criminals in
this school!” Thank God I spend most of my time in the cell
block called North Campus.

If you are one of the many students at UCLA who smokes, you have
probably experienced a situation similar to this. With the
exception of the Sculpture Garden, where 99 percent of the people
have a cigarette between their fingers, our campus seems to have
become a no-man’s land for smokers. Somewhere along the line
smoking has become synonymous with dirty liberal outlaws.

While a large majority of students will admit to drinking
alcohol on a regular basis, they will gasp in horror if you admit
that you smoke. And it is not just the students over in South
Campus ““ it’s our administration as well.

California has become increasingly “health
conscious” over the past decade, taking UCLA with it. Health
food is in, smoking is out and everyone seems to have their own
personal trainer. And that is fine. I am all for health. If you
want to spend your life in a state of paranoia, I won’t try
and stop you. Slap on some sunscreen and eat a veggie burger, but
please don’t tell me when and where I can smoke.

Although cigarettes are still technically considered legal in
the United States, you wouldn’t know it from all of the
restrictions placed on smokers. And hey, with President Bush
hinting at a challenge to Roe v. Wade, who knows what will still be
legal in four years.

Once upon a time we lived in a state where smokers were still
seen as legitimate consumers. Restaurants had smoking and
non-smoking sections so that people who did not want to breathe the
cigarette smoke would not have to, but those who did smoke did not
have their rights restricted. Cigarettes were sold in vending
machines and you were still allowed to have a smoke with your
coffee or cocktail. Those were the good old days, huh, back when
the legal product known as tobacco was still truly viewed as a
legal product.

While I have been getting these dirty looks from fellow students
for the past two years, this year really beat all, with the
addition of new smoking restrictions on campus. Cigarettes are now
no longer sold in Boelter Hall. Based on several articles written
at the time of the decision, it seemed to be implied that the
school did not want to promote a “smoking
lifestyle”.

  Illustration by CLEMENT LAM/Daily Bruin

Promote a smoking lifestyle? UCLA already promotes a smoking
lifestyle by stressing out its students with ridiculously tedious
schedules. I mean, hey, come on, everyone needs a vice! If not
cigarettes, it will be something else. If you want to claim that
you do not have a less than desirable vice, then you are probably
one of those students giving the dirty looks. And hey, in my
opinion, you need a vice more than anyone ““ look at what the
alternative has produced. When you are getting all worked up over
someone else’s cigarette at nine in the morning, you know
something is wrong.

In addition, realistically speaking, just because UCLA decides
to stop selling cigarettes on campus, it does not mean that
students are going to stop smoking. As any smoker knows, if you
need a cigarette, you’ll cross the Sahara to get one.

If UCLA won’t sell cigarettes on campus, students will
walk down to Westwood Village to get them. Thus, while UCLA has not
lessened the amount of smokers on campus, it has made a lot of
students quite bitter due to their trek down the hill.

I do understand that science has proven that second hand smoke
is harmful. I can understand that one might not want to breathe in
the smoke and thus contribute to one’s chances of dying from
emphysema, or what have you. (Although I have to add that since our
chances of dying from cancer are already 1 in 5, who cares what
kind of cancer we die from?)

However, as long as smoking is still legal in the United States,
I have the right to smoke. And if you do not want to breathe it in,
you have the right to not stand next to me. When you get down to
it, you even have the right to give me a dirty look if you want
to.

I just think that it is kind of sad that you have nothing better
to get upset about. Anyway, if you are so worried about your
health, my first suggestion would be to stop eating the meat in the
dining halls.

If UCLA could come to terms with the fact that a large
percentage of its students smoke, the school could actually make a
large profit off of it. Selling cigarettes on campus is not telling
students that it is favorable to smoke. It is simply assuring
students that the board of directors live in reality, and
understand the idea of supply and demand. Students are going to buy
cigarettes one way or another, but this way at least the money
would stay in the school.