Pro-Smoking Colleges

Applying to College
41

<p>'"impaired sense of smell</p>

<p>the bottom line</p>

<p>If you smoke cigarettes, your sense of smell may not be as good as it should be. Smokers have more trouble identifying odors than nonsmokers do, and about twice as many smokers as nonsmokers have a reduced sense of smell. Smoking affects the sense of smell in both young people and older ones. </p>

<p>The sense of smell is more important than you may realize. Much of the flavor of food actually comes from its smell, rather than its taste. People who can't smell don't enjoy their food as much as other people do. The sense of smell is also important for safety. For example, people with an impaired sense of smell would be less able to detect the odor that is added to natural gas (the kind of gas used in gas stoves) to alert people to gas leaks. </p>

<p>quitting</p>

<p>Fortunately, though, the sense of smell may improve after a person quits smoking."</p>

42

<p>tell that to tony bourdain...</p>

<p>one of the world's best food critics/chef</p>

<p>and smoker</p>

43

<p>i hate people who think that since there's been an exception that it doesn't apply at all. NO not everyone will have the same effect from smoking, but it is proven that the vast majority will. There are people who don't wear seat belts because one guy got thrown from his car right before it exploded so not wearing a seatbelt technically saved his life. But do you realise how many millions of times the opposite has been true. Oh well, i don't feel like fighting with you. If you really believe that smoking isn't that detrimental then you're not intellectual enough to understand me anyways and you should go die.</p>

44

<p>Being a regular smoker is like being an alcoholic. There is pretty much nothing wrong with a cigarette or cigar now and then, or a drink every once in awhile, but once you get addicted, you have a problem. I'd like to see anyone here defend being an alcoholic.</p>

45

<p>If you ask a smoker if they can smell themselves, what do they say? Do they think they stink? </p>

<p>Ask others if a smoker stinks, and you will get the truth.</p>

<p>Go ahead and stink yourself up. </p>

<p>Smokers come across as needy. Need to smoke to relax. Need to smoke to celebrate. Need to smoke to cope.</p>

<p>We will never change smokers, they just will never admit to themselves what they are doing could possibly be really harmful and plain nasty.</p>

<p>Ah well.</p>

46

<p>Do any of you really think that people who smoke don't know that its bad for them? Of course they do, but they choose to do it anyway because they enjoy it. Eating fast food is bad for you, drinking is bad for you, sex(can be) bad for you, but they are also very fun. If you don't like smoking then don't smoke, but please don't try to be the health police to people who do. How about a little personal freedom from you so called liberals?</p>

47

<p>Exactly. And whoever said don't apply to Ivys because you smoke is crapping a load of bull. You'll go to those campuses and smokers will be crawling all over the place. It's a release we know is bad for our health--same with drinking, casual sex, etc--like gentleman said. But then again, we are young and thus, at the age where risk taking is common law, even encouraged. We're leaving our parents and going away to college. We're smoking and it's not perfect for our health but obviously, at this time, we've prioritized risks and fun and new experience over long, lasted health and missed chances. Yeah liberals!</p>

48

<p>Strangely enough the schools that seem to have the most smokers tended to be the artsy schools. When S auditioned at Juilliard, the number of smokers was incredible, especially considering these students really need to pamper their throats and vocal cords. And NY has tough anti smoking laws.</p>

49

<p>I have to mention that more and more companies are beginning to ban smokers from their premises.
Not just banning smoking during work hours, but requiring nicotine tests to determine if they smoke at all, and firing the workers if they haven't quit.
Yes it is legal- 29 states have passed legislation restricting businesses for usuing tobacco addiction as sole reason to fire someone, but other states including my own, Washington do not have those restrictions.
FYI</p>

50

<p>The thing about smoking that makes it different from casual sex and casual drinking, a lot of people who smoke get addicted. Sure, there are alcoholics, but most people can drink socially and not become addicted. As for sex addiction, well, I think that's a crock. </p>

<p>But smoking, its harder to get off smoking than many other drugs. THat is why we don't want kids to start. </p>

<p>I jsut dont get it and never will. People think its cool, but if you need a prop to be cool, than that is pretty lame</p>

51

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<p>Wow. If you want to smoke in your own home, that's fine by me, but denying that what you're doing is harmful and dangerous just makes you look foolish -- and very, very young. My friends who smoke don't lie to themselves about it. Say, "I know it's risky, and I decided to take the gamble," don't tell me that the earth is flat.</p>

52

<p>Every adult I know who smokes is sorry they ever took it up.</p>

53

<p>I think it is a VERY slippery slope to allow job discrimination against one health profile. What about gay men--very likely to have numerous health problems up to and including AIDS. The overweight, bad genes, etc.?? I don't smoke but through both really unfair taxes and other forms they have become the last easy target for tremendous discrimination. I don't blame smokers a bit for buying smokes on the reservations. I would too.</p>

54

<p>I do agree that smokers know theyre taking the risk. If it sounded like I was deluding myself--that's not what I meant. I realize that it's dangerous to not just smokers but those around smokers.</p>

55

<p>A smoke-free policy can benefit student health and campus aesthetic
By Gina Mendoza</p>

<p>Smokers on campus are in an uproar at the thought that Bakersfield College could soon be a smoke-free campus.
I have observed the large number of individuals who choose to shorten their lives, blacken their lungs, send daily invitations to deadly diseases such as cancer and emphysema, and reek of foul cigarette odor.
These individuals will argue that, "This is America, and we have the right to smoke wherever we choose!" However, smokers' rights do not extend over to my lungs.
Pollution is already a large enough problem. Who gave smokers the "right" to contaminate our air even more? Why should non-smoking students and faculty unwillingly have to be exposed to smokers' disgusting habit? We shouldn't!
I should have the right to breathe clean air as I walk across campus, and I most certainly should not have to see or step on nasty cigarette butts left behind by careless smokers who are too lazy to find a trashcan.
We have a beautiful campus, and we should take pride in it. Quite frankly, the ashtrays outside of our buildings are a real eyesore. Smokers will whine that the buildings are already smoke-free, and it shouldn't be a big deal to smoke outside on campus.
The big deal is that all other schools in Bakersfield, excluding colleges and the university, prohibit smoking on school grounds regardless of whether you are an adult, a parent picking up your child or an employee. Smoking is not allowed. Bakersfield College is an institution of higher learning that deserves the same respect.
Granted, elementary, junior high and high schools are public schools that students by law have to attend. To attend college is a choice that adults make, and therefore college smokers feel that they are entitled to smoke at school, but what kind of example are we setting by allowing this to happen? We are simply telling the youth in our community to do as we say, not as we do. We are showing our children that you only have to take pride in your school, and be respectful to others until you are an adult, and then you can behave as you choose.</p>

<p>I'm all for people exercising their free- choice rights, but there is a real problem when those free choices put others in danger. According to the Times of London, "a seven- year, 10-country study shows exposure to passive smoke increases the risk of respiratory disease by thirty percent and lung cancer by thirty-four percent," posted in a Medline Plus article.
If BC were to become a smoke-free environment, there would still be a plus side for smokers in that they wouldn't smoke any cigarettes during their time at school, meaning that they would smoke less per day, therefore having to buy cigarettes less often.
As far back as the 1960s, when smoking was permitted on aircrafts research showed that non-smoking flight attendants developed lung cancer from exposure to secondhand smoke on the job. The same is true for restaurant waitresses and employees. The saddest part is that California is one of the few states that have taken action on the issue, prohibiting smoking in all public and government buildings. Now it is time for Bakersfield College to take control as well.</p>

56

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<p>It didn't, ceruleanne. It sounded like Variance2004 was.</p>

57

<p>Hm. It isn't enough that there are statistics that clearly show a correlation between smoking and death? Also, cigarette smoke is a known carcinogen. Smoke degrades the chemical elastin in your lungs which reduces the ability of your lungs to stretch. Over time, this WILL lead to emphezema. But don't worry, smoke is only "dust."</p>

58

<p>Smoke if you want. But don't try to pretend there aren't real risks, even if you only smoke "once in a while." </p>

<p>I say this as someone who watched both of her parents struggle with diseases that they definitely would not have had if they hadn't smoked. </p>

<p>My mother had her larynx removed due to cancer when she was 45. No "genetic" link to cancer in her family, it was 100% the years of inhaling smoke since she started smoking at age 16 that caused her throat and layrnx cancer. She spent the next 25 years breathing through an open hole in her neck and not being able to talk except by "burping" out sounds. Both were quite sexy. </p>

<p>By the way, after 25 years the cancer returned, even though she no longer smoked, along with a cancer-related neurological disease that eventually paralyzed her, confining her to a wheelchair and dependent on me for help to do even the simplest things like poop. (You haven't lived until you need to give an adult an enema and track the results)</p>

<p>She couldn't understand how the cancer had returned because she no longer could smoke (difficult to do through a hole in your throat). The cancer specialists we took her to told her that there was no doubt that the second bout with cancer and the neurological consequences were related to smoking, even though she hadn't smoked in 25 years.</p>

<p>My father was a star athlete in high school. Started smoking "just one every once in a while" when he was in the army. By his 30's, when I was born, the "one every once in a while" had become a pack a day habit. By the time he was 50, he had emphysema. No genetic link of this in his family. It was entirely caused by the cigarettes. By the time he died 20 years later, his bones were so brittle from having to take steroids for years just to keep breathing that he once fractured his wrist just brushing it against the kitchen counter and he hadn't been able to leave the house for several years because he needed to be hooked up to a full tank of oxygen and couldn't walk more than a few feet at a time. </p>

<p>I run a non-profit organization for people with cancer. I have talked with literally hundreds of lung cancer patients. I have never met a lung cancer patient who hadn't been a smoker at some point in their lives. I have researched lung cancer extensively and only in very rare cases does it affect folks who don't smoke. Usually, those cases are people who lived with smokers. There has never been a genetic link found related to lung cancer, but there IS a well-substantiated link, based on thousands of research studies, linking lung cancer with smoking. </p>

<p>Oh, I almost forgot to mention. I suffer from severe asthma. Have since I was a child. I have never smoked, but have been asked many many times by doctors trying to help me get my asthma under control if I had parents who smoked when I was a child. They all nod knowingly when I say yes, my parents smoked, because my lungs clearly show signs of smoking-related scaring even though I have never smoked myself. So, even if you don't care about what you are doing to your body, you can be affecting someone you love.</p>

<p>So, smoke if you want. Just don't fool yourself that the pleasures of smoking are worth the risk of ending up like my parents and the other folks I know who have been affected by smoking-related diseases. It isn't. </p>

<p>(And yes, I fully expect that people will tell me that it isn't going to happen to THEM. Same thing my parents said when my sister and I used to beg them not to smoke.)</p>

59

<p>"sex(can be) bad for you"</p>

<p>umm.... no</p>

<p>but smoking is!</p>

60

<p>Btw, I've heard that drinking in moderation isn't necessarily bad for you health. In fact, it is kinda beneficial (reduces risk of heart disease?)???? Obviously, if you are a drunk it will hurt you. But in moderation is it otherwise okay? Educate me.</p>