A right to be free from smokers

[Thomas3.20.2010]

As Americans, it is an instinctive reaction to feel that limitations on personal choices violate our rights. This sort of knee-jerk response isn’t necessarily bad; it defines us as a nation of individuals who deeply believe in freedom, and who question and/or fight any entity that seeks to take that freedom away.

But we often forget that such freedom is not unlimited, for it comes with a very important and often unrecognized caveat. We have a right to do what we choose, however we choose to do it, as long as our own actions do not infringe upon the rights of others. In general, we have freedom of choice. But we could not legally choose to assault another person, for instance, because such an action violates the rights of the other individual.

This issue comes into play when dealing with smoking in public areas, an issue that has recently been addressed on this campus. The previous sentence probably elicited that same instinctive rejection as discussed above, but smoking is an activity that, when done in the presence of others who are not willingly involved, is a violation of peoples’ rights.Smoking is not a healthy habit. This is a universally accepted truth, as is the fact that even secondhand smoke is harmful. The byproduct of one individual’s choice to smoke contains a host of harmful substances unrecognizable and unpronounceable to most people outside of the chemistry department. Among other things, exposure to these chemicals can cause heart disease, lung cancer, low birth weights, a host of other lung illnesses and even eventually death.

When one person walking in a public area lights up, their secondhand smoke invariably reaches the lungs of a bystander. This individual has just unwillingly inhaled a poison that was produced by the smoker. This is a small yet common occurrence. It happens every day, with no noticeable health detriments for most individuals. But inhalation of secondhand smoke has a cumulative effect. The results may not appear in a year, or even 10. Many individuals will never experience serious health effects as a direct result of secondhand smoke, but that does not mean they have not been harmed.

Secondhand smoke is a violation of individuals’ right to their own health. It is a series of small, almost unnoticeable assaults on others’ well-being. And, despite their minuteness, are still violations of individual rights.If someone were walking in a public place, spraying a can containing a chemical that would not cause immediate damage, but was nevertheless a poison, they would be arrested. And we would think nothing of this arrest unless we were applauding it. Smoking in public areas is tantamount to the previous action. And while smoking is an activity that has been ingrained into our culture, its social acceptability does not make this analogy any less true.

I have nothing against individuals who smoke. I believe strongly in personal freedom. What one person chooses to do with their own body is their business, and if some individuals are not bothered by secondhand smoke, and willingly choose to be around individuals who are smoking, that is also a personal choice. But The University of Alabama contains thousands of people who do not want to smoke, who do not want to inhale secondhand smoke, and who do not want to walk around campus perpetually holding their breaths.

The activity of smoking in public should not be condoned, because it violates the balance between personal rights and the rights of others. Yes, an individual has the freedom to harm his or her own body, but that individual does not have the right to force similar harm upon another.Colleges and even entire states throughout the nation have recognized this. It is time that The University does as well. Smoking in public areas should be disallowed. At the very least, the University could designate specific areas that are the only public places people are allowed to light up, as these places could be avoided by those who do not want to inhale secondhand smoke.

Smokers have a right to smoke. But all non-smokers have just as much of a right to their health. Banning or controlling smoking in public areas would then be an act of protecting rights rather than violating them. It is time such action is taken.

Those who choose to smoke could still do so on private property and those who choose not to could walk around campus confident that their well-being is not being undermined. One person’s rights end where another person’s rights start. Or, as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court more colorfully put it, “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”