It looks like Ohio State University, one of the largest schools in the nation, may be going smoke-free in the near future. Of course, this has given rise to debate, the latest of which popped up in my Google Alerts. Just when I thought I was reading one of the better-reasoned pro-smoking letters to the editor of a college newspaper, I saw this and the author lost all credibility:
“…why stop with cigarettes? Fast food, pop, speedy bikers, flip-flops and iPods can also be dangerous. Why don’t we ban those things?”
This is a classic “slippery slope” argument, in which a ban of one activity will set precedent for the bans of other, more trivial activities. It’s a good argument, but why don’t we ban those things?
Fast food is certainly not the safest food to eat, but one’s choice to consume it hardly affects other people. I guess the argument can be made that frequent fast food consumption leads to obesity, obesity leads to others’ disgust, and disgust can lead to stress. Sounds a little convoluted to me. Still, it can be very uncomfortable to share an airplane row with people who don’t fit into their own seats. Though this is inconvenient, it doesn’t have lasting health effects. Furthermore, neither of these situations has a direct impact on my health, let alone an impact on par with secondhand smoke. The same can be said for soda.
Speedy bikers, on the other hand, are a legitimate concern. As far as I know, most college campuses, including UC Berkeley, have “dismount zones,” in which riders must walk their bikes through densely populated areas of campus to prevent them from running into people. This is a warranted policy because people can literally have their bones broken by careless riders. So, if Ohio State doesn’t have dismount zones, they should; ban speedy bikers from campus. Either way, bikes serve a practical purpose—they get people places faster. The only place that cigarettes get people faster is the hospital.
I suppose flip-flops can be dangerous, but not to other people. Exposing your feet to all of the bacteria on the ground can potentially lead to infections, but unless you play “footsy” with strangers, you aren’t hurting anyone but yourself and your friends who consent to touching your gross feet. Likewise, when non-smokers hang around their smoking friends, they are consenting to inhale secondhand smoke. Flip-flops also cause people to trip and fall. I’ve tripped plenty of types in mine, sometimes bumping into a friend in the process. But I’ve never knocked anyone over, and I trip in my running shoes just as often. Now there’s a slippery slope for you—before you know it, we may all have to walk barefoot to eliminate all instances of tripping! I simply can’t imagine a flip-flop ban following in the footsteps of a smoking ban.
iPods are an interesting comparison to cigarettes. Normally, I wouldn’t consider listening to music on the way to class dangerous, but having been reminded of speedy bikers, I can think of a scenario: A biker is heading downhill toward a crowd of people, all of whom are wearing headphones, and realizes his brakes don’t work. He yells at them to move, but of course, they can’t hear him, and the biker knocks them all down like dominoes. In this case, however, the people with the iPods demonstrated contributory negligence, in that by wearing headphones, they contributed to the outcome of the accident. Some may even say that “they asked for it” to happen. Those who find themselves in close proximity to smokers certainly don’t ask to inhale their secondhand smoke.
All of this is to say that there is no good slippery slope argument for the opposition of a smoking ban. I challenge you to think of examples that are more analogous to secondhand smoke.
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