It’s a touchy subject for both sides: Some people believe a tobacco ban infringes on smokers’ rights, and others believe the habits of smokers put the health of non-smokers at risk. Just from looking at these two sides of the smoking divide, it’s clear that a better, enforceable ban be put in place because the right to smoke goes out the window when it affects the health of non-smokers.

It is universally accepted that smoking is unhealthy, both for the smoker, and those around the smoker. This isn’t exactly groundbreaking news. Smokers are perfectly free to ruin their health, but when their habit harms others, we need to stand against it as a community.

Most smokers report that they want to quit smoking, but can’t. This is a point I have seen used against the smoking ban, surprisingly enough, that it is unreasonable to ask a smoker to quit smoking, so the ban is unfair. The problem with that argument is two-fold.

First of all, it caters to an unhealthy lifestyle. Rules should not be made or changed to benefit someone who is harming themselves or those around them, because that is the opposite of what a university’s goals should be.

Second, the argument would hold more weight if they truly were stuck in their situation, but the reality is that there are a number of alternatives to smoking. Nicotine Patches and E-cigarettes solve every problem a smoker could have. They are much cheaper, have no lasting odor and even come with programs to help smokers who want to quit slowly do so, with packages offering smaller and smaller doses of nicotine per cigarette.

I get that smoking can suck even for the smoker, and I definitely do not resent the smokers themselves, unless it is harming others. I see students go far out of their way to smoke their cigarettes away from the apartments, and by the dumpster, or somewhere where students wont often be forced to breathe in secondhand smoke, and I have never had a problem with this. As long as littering doesn’t become a problem, it doesn’t affect anyone else.

Because of this, if the ban sees harsher changes, it should also be limited to banning smoking only in certain areas, such as within a certain distance from an apartment door, or the front entrance to a building. If someone is willing to make the effort to only smoke where no one else has to inhale tobacco, they should not punished for it.

That being said, this “pseudo-ban” needs to have some real teeth behind it, or the policy will continue to be a joke.