Somehow Hayley Bramble is convinced, in her March 2 commentary (“Gives smokers a break”), that we should be a little more tolerant of smokers. In the commentary, Bramble compared smoking to drinking coffee and to the more serious consequences of drinking and driving.
The difference between smoking and coffee is coffee doesn’t caffeinate the nearby tapwater.
The comparison to alcoholism is good, but far from supporting the argument of tolerance toward smokers, it seems to justify shunning smokers. Drinking and driving does have serious health risks with traffic accidents but it is also illegal and socially anathema. In comparison, smoking gets off rather light merely being illegal to smoke within and around public buildings.
It may be enlightening to many smokers that there are many of us who treat our bodies with all the respect and care of a high performance machine. If you owned a high-speed jet-boat you certainly wouldn’t like it if somebody filled it with an oil and gas mixture and told you, “I estimated the ratios instead of measuring, but it’s close to what it should be.” Most athletes certainly would not appreciate having to inhale a bunch of smoke and there are many people who think likewise, even among those of us not competing in the Olympics.
In the end, Bramble was accurate stating how smokers shouldn’t “ask (us) to take a drag off (their) cigarettes.” Thank you for not smoking in a public area and forcing drags of secondhand smoke.
Jay Hann
Mathematics senior