Many of us have smelled that sweet, somewhat stifled, flavored aroma that lingers from so many of our peers' lips. No, I'm not talking about cherry flavored ChapStick. I'm talking about cigarettes. Whether we quiver at the thought of flavored air entering our lungs, or we are the type of person where our neurons go crazy over just the thought of inhaling such sweet nectar, we have all been around cigarettes.
At Miami University, it is not uncommon to see a herd of timid looking first-year boys huddled around a hookah, inhaling that sweetened tobacco on a freezing cold night. Or be outside a bar and smell the scent of flavored cigarettes that seems to somehow permanently stink up your new clothes.
Some of us choose to live our "American dream" by working for $7.75 an hour and using that sweat-earned money towards filling up our lungs with flavored, polluted smoke. Despite the hazards smoking has for your health, some of us still chose to smoke while we walk from off campus toward our thousands-of-dollars education. Whether you agree with smoking or not, do you believe in having your own choice to enjoy that flavored cigarette as you walk to class? What if that was illegal?
In June, President Obama signed a bill that gives the FDA power to ban candy-flavored and fruit-flavored cigarettes, prohibits companies from using terms such as "low tar," "light" or "mild" and lowers nicotine levels in cigarettes.
The bill he signed has not made flavored cigarettes illegal yet. It has simply given the FDA the power to potentially ban certain types of these flavored cigarettes. As Americans, we pride ourselves on the idea of "freedom." We have the freedom of speech, the freedom to earn a living and the freedom to live. I am under the impression that, as Americans, if we want to fill our lungs with sweet smoke, then gosh darn it, we will.
The concerning thing is more than 400,000 Americans a year die from tobacco related illnesses which billions of taxpayers' dollars go toward. Is Obama correct in trying to lower this amount? His goal is to stop teens from ever starting to smoke by banning these "candy-flavored cigarettes," since 90 percent of current American smokers began smoking before they turned 18.
Will putting these limitations on cigarettes make any progress? Could the 400,000 deaths a year decrease by even the smallest percentage? What this ban comes down to is one question: Is it worth it? Is it worth the FDA potentially putting a ban on something as simple as flavored cigarettes when it is something we should have the right to choose? Should I fill my lungs with hazardous disgust? What will happen to hookah bars if this does pass? I don't think we need the government telling us what we can and can't choose to do socially.
Kelly Smithsmithkd3@muohio.edu
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