For a Lack of Rope and Coal Oil: My Take on MUN’s Anti-smoking Policies and what they tell us about their Implementers

It’s somewhat reassuring to know that most of MUN’s tobacco puffers are choosing to ignore the nefarious campus-wide smoking ban, and exercising their human right to defy sheer bigotry.  It pleases me to know that some people still value the freedoms for which past generations laid down their lives in trenches and on beaches.

Just recently, the CBC’s Here & Now—digging for dirt on what was obviously a slow news day—reported that the smoking ban is obviously not working; that the policy simply isn’t being enforced.  I guess that makes it official.  It isn’t gospel until the local wing of Canada’s middlebrow broadcaster confirms it as so.

According to the CBC’s report, it appears to be business as usual with tobacco on campus.  This is in keeping with my father’s assertion that most students and employees continued to smoke wherever they chose following the implementation of various anti-smoking policies throughout the late 1980s and 1990s.  In fact, my father insists that the only occasion he was ever badgered for smoking was one time in the Breezeway bar when he and some friends lit up during the wrong hours.  How utterly ironic!  To think that a drinking hole would be the primary focus of a smoking ban!  Maybe they should have lit up in the campus chapel.

Of course, Father and his friends later identified the Breezeway employee’s car and flattened all four of his tires.  Daddy was never one to suffer fools and oppression.  In subsequent years, whenever visiting the campus for research purposes, the only area in which he refrained from smoking was the QE II Library.

In fact, my father is now wondering how come smokers and sympathetic fellow students haven’t been having organized “smoke-ins” and maybe spray-painting a few walls and windows with suitable graffiti.  Both he and Mother (a non-smoker) have developed a great disdain for MUN’s governing body in light of such recent policy changes.  Needless to say, I wouldn’t advise touching them up for alumni donations.

To reiterate a Facebook comment of mine that also appeared on the NTV website:

“I’m afraid I may have to go begging for a student loan or find a wealthy benefactor if I want to continue at Memorial. For some time now, my parents have been threatening to pull me out of university on the grounds that it’s become a “playpen” for “overgrown infants”, and has more to do with contemporary dogmas and pointless vanity than what it does actual education. I fear this may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. My parents insist that universities are places where professors and students sit around ashtrays, debating historical theories and philosophical positions. Anti-smoking policies, they say, have virtually nothing to do with health concerns, and are merely vain, elitist machinations that insure discrimination and subservience—on par with the ‘jim crow’ sections of old. I’m a non-smoker, but I’m inclined to agree with them. I have a feeling my second semester at MUN will prove to be my last.”

Thankfully, things worked out for me; my parents came through with the filthy lucre and I’m now back in class.  But that doesn’t change the situation on campus.  The powers that be are still targeting a minority based on subjugation desires disguised as health concerns.

In the context of the Here & Now ‘story’, MUN director of Health and Safety Sheila Miller was heard to state that Memorial is offering various stop-smoking programs as a means of accommodating the ban.

What makes Ms Miller think that all smokers want to accommodate her petty grievances and quit smoking?  In another lifetime, would Ms Miller have been trying to persuade African Americans to change their skin colour?  Like tobacco, African Americans were said to be non-hygienic and a threat to community health.  Would Ms Miller or others of her annoying ilk be willing to stop driving to accommodate my pet peeves, er, health concerns?  After all, I don’t drive, so why should I have to tolerate Ms Miller’s noisy motor and polluting tailpipe? 

Ms Miller would have us believe that she’s a veritable bastion of health concerns.  Yeah, right!   Because we all know that health fanatics like to carry that much weight around!  Maybe she should consider living up to her own title, and try knocking off a few pounds.  Judging from photos of her, Ms Miller looks about as health conscious as a sewer rat in a garbage dumpster.  Talk about an arrogant old hypocrite.  

To market, to market: MUN director Sheila Miller would have us believe she’s the epitome of Health and Safety 

And if MUN starts enforcing this bigoted policy, what’s ultimately going to happen?  The smokers will start walking off campus and gathering in hordes on street corners in the area—until one of them gets struck by oncoming traffic.  Then, quite rightfully, the lawsuits will start pouring in.  I guess the desire for subjugation trumps logic—even in university matters.  Does anyone remember segregated colleges in the Deep South?

To waken people up to the truth, MUN smokers might consider copying the image below and posting it on doors, windows and billboards around campus:

In lieu of poster campaigns, another alternative to risking life and limb on the off-campus curb would be heading over to Ms Miller’s office for a smoke—anytime day or night.  It would also be easy to obtain the home addresses of advocates of smoker ostracism among MUN’s ruling elites.  Maybe all smokers out there should think about dropping by such properties for a cigarette every now and then.

So there you have it—my take on the ridiculous smoking ban and its dubious origins. I’ll conclude by saying that I certainly don’t wish to advocate smoking.  However, infringements on personal freedom can often be just as scary as any threats to one’s health.  

That’s not so yummy.  Try and have a nice day....