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# BANNING ALL SMOKING AT SMC IS unrealistic.
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/seeing-clearly-on-smc-campus-this-past-week-q-line-asked-do-you-think-banning-smoking-at-smc-is-a-wise-move-or-just-more-hot-air-here-are-your-respons/
- Published: 2007-05-19T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T00:47:25.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

“BANNING ALL SMOKING AT SMC IS unrealistic. Unfortunately, a pretty large percentage of people still smoke, Including college students. Restricted areas? Yes. Designated places for smoking? Yes. But a total ban would be just like the rest of this city: More hot air. No one really follows through with any of these rules and regulations. Not in this town, anyway.”

“WHEN SMOKING WAS NO LONGER allowed in grocery markets, I would often, in the beginning, hear a check-out clerk asking a customer who was smoking to please put out their cigarette. The smoker would always comply. Most smokers are aware that smoking is a deadly, filthy habit. Most know that they should quit. Still, tobacco is a horrendously addictive habit and requires a great deal of willpower to quit once a smoker is hooked. More than 500,000 smokers perish annually in the United States due to the use of tobacco. It also causes health insurance to skyrocket beyond the reach of many Americans. I believe that smoking should be banned, especially on school campuses.”

“BANNING SMOKING AT SMC IS A WISE move. I take classes there and when I pass all the students sitting on the ledges smoking near the entrance to the music building, I have to hold my breath. It is actually hard to breathe while walking through a wall of smoke. On a hot day when we leave the door to the piano class open, smoke drifts in from nearby smokers. Then we have to close the door and battle the heat. Banning smoking is the right thing to do.”

“I DON’T THINK IT IS A WISE MOVE to ban smoking at SMC. It will probably be like Prohibition, where people got their drinks anyway, out of spite. I don’t think it is a wise thing because if people want something they are going to continue to get it, come hell or high water.”

“SMOKERS WANT TO KILL THEMSELVES with their cigarettes and get lung cancer, fine. Let them do it somewhere else, where nobody else has to smell their stench and risk being around secondhand smoke, because that is dangerous, too. Smokers, they don’t care. They just puff away and if anybody else gets lung cancer, they don’t care. It would be better if they just banned it.”

“I THINK BANNING SMOKING AT SMC is a very wise move and the students are very wise students. As the popular bumper sticker says: Cancer cures smoking.”

“HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED HOW college kids have all the answers? They get an A in American literature or geometry and we are the dummies. Along comes some smarmy councilman, or worse, an educator and there goes another chunk of freedom. Funny how everything that takes away from freedom is done to protect us from ourselves. Only the elite can show us the light — all of this brilliance trying to save us from our selves. If Jesus Christ came back, he would have a hard time competing with the highly paid and so-called educated saints in this town.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 19, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/051907.pdf?ref=smdp.com)