The College Fix

Casey Given, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, thinks UC’s campus smoking bans have gone too far:

Worst of all, this smoking ban is simply the latest mark on a long timeline of Berkeley meddlers socially engineering students’ lives. Not only will bottled water cease to be sold on campus soon because of last year’s ban, it looks as if a citywide prohibition on plastic bags is eminent as well. Note that the current ban is not just limited to smoking but includes other products like chewing tobacco and electronic cigarettes that lack negative externalities. That’s right, fellow Berkeleyans, the administration doesn’t just want to prevent you from harming other students’ bodies — they want to control yours.

So, I call on my fellow students — smokers and non-smokers alike — to stand up to this atrocious intrusion on our personal freedom. An unenforceable law like this broad tobacco ban should be no law at all. We as taxpayers, students and human beings should have the freedom to live our lives peacefully without some nanny state do-gooders breathing down our necks.

But, if all else fails, there’s always that hidden spot behind Stephens Hall to light up.

Read the full column at The Daily Californian.

Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter