Acting New Jersey governor Richard Codey signed a law Monday to prohibit smoking in all college dormitories in the state, both public and private.
Previously smoking had only been banned in dorms in public colleges and universities.
New Jersey’s law is considered the toughest in the nation because it includes private, as well as public, universities. Other states, like Connecticut and Wisconsin, have legislated smoking bans that affect only public university residence halls.
Smoke-free living on college campuses now is the norm. Advocacy groups estimate that more than half of the nation’s public and private universities have stamped out smoking privileges in dorms. Nearly two-dozen colleges are known to have gone so far as to enact campus-wide smoking bans.
“The last five years saw us cross well over the halfway mark,” said Michael McNeil, director of Temple University’s health office and co-chairman of the American College Health Association’s alcohol and tobacco committee. — Daily Record
It’s perfectly fine for the state to regulate smoking on state campuses. It’s perfectly fine for private colleges to regulate smoking on their own campuses. But it’s not fine for the state to regulate smoking on private campuses. If this bad law is allowed to stand, then next you can expect the state to regulate smoking in your own home, and after that, the sky’s the limit. New Jersey has already looked at banning smoking in your own car.
However you feel about smoking, this law is completely un-American and is likely to be found unconstitutional — if we find a college student with the money to challenge it.
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Xerocool
Aug 23, 2005
Ban smoking in a car? I think smoking should be banned If your within about 20 feet off a kid. The smell is horrible.
Patrick
Aug 29, 2005
Rights, individual or otherwise, in the realm of smoking are complex constructions. Certainly, individuals have the right to smoke to their heart’s content, even to the detriment of their own lungs. However, no individual can have the right to act in a manner which risks the health of other individuals. That is, every individual has the right to breath air free from toxins produced when smoking.
The typical injunctions against force or fraud are not sufficient to protect people in the vicinity of a smoker from those toxins. While
For individual rights to operate in a libertarian society there must be a further injunction on the bounds of individual behaviour, one against harm. In such a society, smoking in the vicinity of non-smokers would generally be considered an abrogation of their right to breathe clean air. In the condition that the smoker personally owned the space in which the smoking took place, then individual property rights could be perceived to supercede the individual rights of the non-smoker.
However, arguing that a private entity, such as a corporation, should be allowed to arbitrate local laws which allow one person’s actions to cause harm to others makes little sense. It’s like arguing that private companies should have the right to allow drinking and driving on their premises, or, for that matter, murder.
Non-smoking should be the norm, the legal standard, in places where people congregate. Breathing clean air should be an inalienable right.
Cheers,
p.
Non-Smoker
Jan 24, 2006
BAN ‘EM ALL! BAN ‘EM EVERYWHERE. If smokers were more respectful and thoughtful to non-smokers, then none of this would happen. Eh, think about that. Not only smoker’s freedom to smoke is being taken away from them with bans. They already did that to themselves long, long time ago by smoking thougtless in non-smoker’s face. That’s how we got the new term: “Second-hand Smokers”. Is that fair? Absoutely not, not by choice. Everyone who were exposed to smoke has died by cancer. Why continue smoke!?!?! If you don’t care about dying from smoking, do us a favor: JUMP OFF A BRIDGE AND KILL YOURSELF WITHOUT KILLING US.
bwhahah
Jun 05, 2007
Go ahead and ban smoking in dorms.. just like illegal drugs you will NEVER stop it.. just create a bunch of sneaks, who have to sneak around to smoke.
Smoking bans do nothing..