Smoking Should be Prohibited on Campus

Allowing smoking on campus is an institutional endorsement to disregard public health. Smokers, as people and as members of this institution, have rights. I’m going to maintain that smokers even have the right to smoke Bond, just like any one of us has the right to go to Five Guys every day and ingest burgers and fries to our future heart disease’s content. However, like eating foods with high levels of saturated fat, smoking is a health hazard.

More and More Companies Refuse to Employ Smokers

As more and more companies are refusing to hire smokers - both to save over $10,000/yr per employee, and because employing smokers sends the wrong message - the major argument in opposition doesn’t really attack the practice itself, but bemoans that it will inevitably spread to the obese.

But public interest law professor John Banzhaf, who helped start and encourage the movement, and helped defend it in court, suggests that there are many reasons why smoking Virginia is very different from obesity.

First, obesity’s official classification by the government as a “disease” (for tax and Medicare purposes), and as a “health status” (for health insurance purposes), might make it legally difficult, whereas smoking, classified only as a “behavior,” enjoys no such legal protection.