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M. Andersen of Brighton writes:

I read where there will be disussions about banning smoking on Boulder’s CU campus for..and i quote, “health reasons". What an ambitious concept! But here is a thought. A more innovating issue for the same and many other reasons would be banning alchohol on the campus! Any takers on the chance of that ever happening?

This letter has not been edited.

READER COMMENTS

GOOD!!!!!!! Now we can hear more sniffling from the addicts.

Yeah, I figured the CU students would be up in arms about a smoking ban on campus, but then I read more closely and saw that the ban referred to cigarettes +-)

Good point in the letter, BTW.

Why stop with a smoking ban? If this ban is for "health reasons", why not add alchohol, transfats, sex (STDs), cars(pollution) and whatever any other group chooses to add at a later date due to "health reasons"? For that mater, let's ban PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. We can just sit around and wait for someone to tell us what is acceptable for our health. That way, some one else can be responsible for EVERYONES health.

oh the poor pot head professors may have to find a new place to smoke and get high.
lets ban fast foods and red meat and anything else anyone can think of.
How about we ban exhaling co2 in boulder period. then it could be plowed under and turned into a park.

Boulder is without a doubt the cancer addict capital of Colorado. Just look at all the smokers standing under the no smoking signs (maybe Ward Churchill taught them how to read) at RTD's bus station. Then there is the steady stream of Subaru drivers flicking their cigarettes out the window while driving around with their pro-environment bumper stickers. Once a month my job takes me to Boulder and I spend the day gagging from the smoke.

Blair, you need to distinguish between those actions that just harm the individual involved (personal choice) and those actions that harm not only the individual, but others as well. You can't group secondhand smoke in the same category for transfats, for goodness sakes!

They can vote away as many rights as they want. Does anyone really care what happens in their made up world. It is not against the law to be stupid. Just keep it Boulder. Just as evolution thins the weaker, slower, dumber animals and strengthens the species, so will the Boulder mentality. Once in the real world, a CU grad will not be able to function. They will either return to the mothership or perish.

They can vote away as many rights as they want. Does anyone really care what happens in their made up world. It is not against the law to be stupid. Just keep it in Boulder. Just as evolution thins the weaker, slower, dumber animals and strengthens the species, so will the Boulder mentality. Once in the real world, a CU grad will not be able to function. They will either return to the mothership or perish.

Make it simple. Just outlaw tobacco. End of story.

Then let's see who the libs pick on to fund their chickenshit bans and giveaways.

To nearly all the posted comments above, I say:

That's a classic!

Nuff said.

4:51 & 4:52 Unfortunately I think this has been said before, ideas form in Boulder and then spread to other localities. They are like a virus or a wildfire.
Unfortunately again the government will lose a tax base and then "what about the children" will come up again. Anyone use a cell phone, computer, alcohol, fast food? what else can we tax to fill the gap?

I think to many people fail to understand the big picture or do not wish to see beyond the end of their own nose. The smoking ban would not only affect the Boulder campus, it will include ALL the CU campuses. The next steps will then to be ALL college campuses in Colorado. Then the sponsers of this will be imboldened to continue to seek even more consetions. All in the name of "health reasons". The point I am trying to make, is that if people allow a ban of this nature simply for "health reasons", what do you think the next ban will be? If you are concerned for your health, you do not need to associate and breath the air of the smoker. If you are concerned for the health of the smoker, are you not stepping into something that is not your concern? By the way, experts "believe" that secondhand smoke is a contributing factor for cancer in maybe 10 to 15% of cases. Will the next ban to be for healthy reasons? What a person is doing is not healthy, therfore it should be banned. If some people consider a certain lifestyle to be unhealthy, should that lifestyle be banned? Where will it stop? Who will stop it? We, as citizens of this country, do have a certain amount of freedom of choice and I do believe that to many zealots believe that their choices should apply to everyone else. Are you so willing to allow the private agenda of a few people to become yours? Are you(plural) willing to let others dictate what you can or cannot do or think? Do you wish to let others decide what is best for you? We all make choices and mistakes, but must learn from them.

There are still more smokers than illegals,and more guns than children.

fiesty stated "Blair, you need to distinguish between those actions that just harm the individual involved (personal choice) and those actions that harm not only the individual, but others as well. You can't group secondhand smoke in the same category for transfats, for goodness sakes!"

That is absolutely true - as far as it goes.
First - obesity is killing more people than tobacco - which raises ALL our health care rates (in other words, it DOES harm others as well - or is having your pocket picked by the insurance companies harmless).
Second - more than 20 years ago, it was stated that exercising outdoors in metro Denver during rush hour for 1 hour (which lasts longer today) was the equivalent of polluting ones lungs with 2 packs of cigarettes. While some cars burn somewhat cleaner today (IF they are properly tuned - and are not the monstrous SUVs that so many choose to use which get lousy mileage), just as there are more metro area residents, there are more vehicles - polluting the air even more. In addition, even today, with a well-tuned vehicle, simpy starting a well tuned small to mid-sized car puts the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes in the air - and both JAMA & Lancet (the British version of JAMA) have linked today's higher rates of lung problems with air pollution, tire smut, etc from vehicles. Why don't we see MANDATORY no-drive days if this is truly a health issue - especially on "red air quality days"?

If folks want to hurt themselves via smoking or obesity and so on, let 'em. The government has no business stepping in- they are willfully engaging in an action, knowing full well the consequences. It's their "right" to do do what they want with their own bodies; besides, it culls the gene pool if they want to be that stupid. :-) However, make them accept responsibility for those choices, i.e. don't let them sue McDonald's because it "made" them obese.

However, I DO believe the law needs to step in when those actions not only affect, but hurt, others around them. It's the old adage "your rights end where mine begin". It's the basis of our laws in defining our rights and freedoms. For example, you have the right to free speech, but not libel and slander. You have the right to bear arms, but not to go around shooting people. This definitely applies to the smoking issue.

Mary raises some excellent points that I agree with. Insurances should take a good, long hard look at coverage of willfully destructive behaviors. Further, if our government had a backbone and wasn't bowing to big business, they'd put some strict and TOUGH regulations on air pollution. For example, why not mandate vehicles with zero emissions? The technology is out there. For example, the MDI Cat (used in Europe for both personal vehicles and city buses) uses air technology. It requires no special infrastructure, can be "fueled" using just about any air compressor found at most gas stations, and has zero emissions. And it's cheap! starting at $7K. Or start the infrastructure for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. There used to be just 1 or 2 brands available, but over 6 were just unveiled at the recent auto show. They too have zero emissions- just a little water vapor.

I find it interesting to note that high school campuses have small areas known as Smokers Hill or Smokers Field where teens, who are not allowed by law to possess tobacco can light up, but adults of legal age to make the decision are being told they cannot.

Mary,

You make a good point that we, the Coalition for Equal Rights,have know for a long time. There are more dangerous to health constituents in the outdoor air in any town or city on any given day than there is, or has ever been, in smoking allowed bars and taverns with normal air ventilation equipment and, for not very much money, certainly less than the devastating economic losses we have suffered, those ventilation installations can be upgraded so to the point where the air in bars and taverns will constantly be cleaner than outdoor air by a factor of 5.

And for all those tobacco control zealots who created and contrived the zero tollerance standard through payed for, on demand studies, which contradicts the federlly statutory standards of OSHA, I dare you to argue the point made. I must warn you however that Stienberg's citing false information, Repace's deceptive and lying claims and the rest of your propaganda and legislators like Radical Ron May and Bitter Betty Boyd who support your indefensible claims, all of it flys in the face of the industry regulatory and statutory standards of the preeminent agency of the federal government charged with insuring the safety of workplaces and workers, OSHA,

What do you think people and legislators, are you going to believe non governmental, payed for,on demand, short term, non scientific methodology studies designed to support preconcieved conclusions? Or are you going to accept the federal statutory regulation standards, that are accepted throughout all industries, as a safe harbor for worker safety, and OSHA's seven year, throughly reviewed, federal appeals court upheld study that set permissible exposure limits for second hand smoke that hold statutory power?

By the way that federal appeals court finding was what forced the American Cancer Society and ASH to withdraw their laws suits against OSHA, because their contentions were proven to be false and OSHA threatened to issue an even more damning statement if they did not.

So they withdrew the suits to preserve their preplanned agenda of supporting and advancing smoking bans to the advantage of the mecantile interests of Johnson and Johnson pharmaceuticals the producer of NICO DERM CQ, marketed by GlaxcoSmithCline, a British own company and other pharmaceutical companies and, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation who owns $3.3 biliion in Johnson and Johnson stock and has given tens of million of dollars in grants to both the American Cancer Sociey and ASH as well as many state health departments and anti-tobacco organizations, Colorado's among them, to help advance their mercantile interests by getting legislators to enact smoking bans.

Oh, just as an aside, all tobacco products are highly excised taxed, all the nonsmoke nicotine delivery devices like gums, patchs, inhalors etal, are zero excised taxed.Get the picture?

Think about it. Do you want huge phamaceutical companies and their equally huge stock holders granting millions of dollars to public agencies to advance their mercantile special interest and interfering with the legitimate business of government and the publics best interests? That is what happened folks.

The smoking ban was never about health as advertized and claimed by tobacco control, it is all about money and power manipulating our government by using carefully prepared propaganda that recites the flawed and deceptive mantra of tobacco control to promote the mercantile interests of those who have that power and control.

Mary-the answer is obvious.It's a hate issue,not a health issue.If any of this had anything to do with prohibiting so-called unhealthy behavior,the socio-political landscape would be very different today.I'm sorry to say that although your evidence is interesting and persuasive,I doubt it'll convince even one anti of the rightness of what we're trying to do.
When I see honest people like yourself trying again and again to engage these pigs in some kind of rational debate,I'm reminded of the German Jews who at the beginning of the Holocaust wrote piteous letters to Adolf Hitler about their plight,begging him for relief.
OK,Jimminy,you say,if being reasonable doesn't work on the antis,then what does? What works is hostile confrontation.Two examples:some time ago during one of the periodic episodes of gun control-itis,National Rifle Association spokesman Wayne LaPierre used the phrase "jackbooted thugs" in refernce to the anti-gun claque.Naturally there was a Vesuvius of sanctimonious outrage from said thugs.La Pierre not only vigorously defended his words,he repeated them on national TV(60 Minutes as I recall).Today we in Colorado have an expanded right to carry concealed weapons.
The other goes back to the spiritual ancestors of todays antismokers.Back in the'60s,the(partly)KGB-assisted antiwar/antiwork/antibathing folks were fond of chanting "Hey,Hey,LBJ.How many kids did you kill today?" President Johnson was driven from office in 1968.
So no,persuasion does not work.Hostile,angry confrontation does.

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