© Ball State University
Ball State University is the latest institution to participate in the finger wagging of the nanny state elite. The trustees recently announced that students and employees of the college will no longer have the right to consume legal tobacco products on campus grounds. Smoking is permitted only in automobiles with all windows rolled up. Any adult who breaks the seal and allows the slightest streak of smoke to waft into the open air will face a $50 fine.
Ball State was already subject to the state-wide smoking ban that the Indiana government passed in 2012. With the exceptions of stand-alone taverns, commercial casinos and tobacco shops, every public building - publicly or privately owned - must prohibit smoking. Lamenting the dangers of second hand smoke has become one of the doctrinal demands of the politically correct and socially inept.
The most often cited study that supposedly "proves" the harmful impact of second hand smoke was conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1992. The always meddling and burdensome EPA concluded that environmental smoke causes 3,000 lung cancer deaths per year. Since the release of the report, local and state governments, along with many private institutions, have treated smokers like criminals and have reacted to the striking of a match with the swift and severe disapproval normally reserved for acts of animal cruelty.
Hysterical bureaucrats might be surprised to discover that a congressional inquiry into the EPA study on second hand smoke determined that "the Agency had abused and manipulated scientific data in order to reach a politically motivated result." A federal judge, after reviewing the study for a lawsuit involving environmental smoke, levied a similar indictment, saying, "The EPA committed to a conclusion before their research had begun."
A study of credibility and integrity, conducted by scientists at UCLA and the State University of New York in Stony Brook, found that non-smoking spouses of heavy smokers, after 30 years of daily exposure to environmental smoke, had no heightened lung cancer risk. Facts, logic and self-evident truth are burned up and tossed at the curb like a cigarette butt in the discussion over smoking bans. Even if second hand smoke resembled the poison that its detractors use to manipulate people with fear, there is a larger philosophical precedent at stake that should worry even the most dedicated anti-smoking babysitters.
The trustees of Ball State essentially run the institution, and therefore, have the right to enact whatever policies they feel appropriate for the campus. Restaurant owners in Indiana, however, just like restaurant and bar owners in the 28 states that impose smoking bans on their citizens, no longer have the ability to exercise that same right of liberty and private property.
Three of the values that made America a uniquely livable country for such a long period in history were freedom, independence and a leave us alone philosophy of governance. In an era of expanding state power, small and large threats to liberty emerge under the "we know what's good for you" banner of lofty rhetoric and liberal Puritanism.
Smoking is no longer allowed in the overwhelming majority of businesses in Indiana. Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York City, who infamously attempted to ban the sale of sodas larger than 16 ounces, recently announced plans to prohibit bodegas from displaying cigarettes behind the counter. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has mandated that all public buildings sell only "healthy snacks" in their vending machines, and has promised to widen the mandate to private buildings. Many cities and counties across America have outlawed restaurant owners from using trans-fats in their food products, and the cities of Las Vegas and Orlando have criminalized feeding the homeless outdoors.
On the federal level, there are so called "common sense" initiatives to infringe upon the rights of gun owners and buyers to exercise the Second Amendment. Smoking regulations, which began as separated sections and have mutated into state-wide bans, demonstrate the veracity of the "slippery slope" cliché. In the case of firearm, tobacco, and dietary restrictions, who has the privilege of defining and deciding "common sense"?
Self-appointed school masters satisfy their puny visions of grandeur by interfering in the lives of tax paying, free thinking adults, and believe those adults are too stupid to determine their own priorities and preferences. The lifestyle of the enlightened elite is, apparently, so superior to that of the unwashed masses that they force conformity under penalty of taxation, ticketing, or imprisonment. As an adult, I would rather have the ability to choose what I put in my body, and suffer the consequences if I make bad decisions. That is called responsibility, and any society that elevates personal responsibility to a place of prominence, must also believe in its intellectual companions: freedom and personal choice.
Freedom and personal choice are novel concepts in the shadow cast by an obese nanny state, but let those who still believe celebrate with a favorite drink and, if they choose, a cigarette and a doughnut.
David Masciotra is the author of All That We Learned About Livin': The Art and Legacy of John Mellencamp (forthcoming, The University Press of Kentucky) and Against Traffic: Essays on Politics and Identity. For more information visit www.davidmasciotra.com/.
New York (city and state) has led the way in Nanny/Nazi behavior towards the masses. In the year 2000 we were one of the first to outlaw smoking in bars. The insanity has grown in the past 12 + years regardless of political party in office. I have always thought that we were some sort of a test market for draconian laws. I see it spreading to even the most free of the states with great fervor. Let us take care of you our masses! We know what is BEST for you!