Keith Reed
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Cigarettes have been a big topic on campus. With the invention of e-cigarettes, this helped the smokers bypass the state’s smoking ban. But on Aug. 25, the university updated its Tobacco Free Campus policy. The new policy has made it harder for those who continue to smoke to be in compliance.

Smoking is something that I have always had issues with. My mother has been smoking for the duration of my life. It is something that has become commonplace to me. At times, my friends would ask if I smoked because my clothes smelled as such. It was secondhand smoke that found its way onto my clothes. My mother has a permanent, terrible cough, and that is something that I do not want to happen to me. I decided then that I would not start smoking cigarettes.

Fast-forward to college, I toyed around with the idea that smoking cigarettes would be cool. I only thought this because noticing the effort that people went through to get their fix made it seem worthwhile to me. I started with candy cigarettes, and people quickly caught on because they were noticeably smaller than the real thing. They were fun for a bit until real cigarettes were on the menu. Having my own pack made me feel cool, dangerous, and hypocritical at the same time. I have been giving cigarettes flack and now that I was a proud owner made me a rebel.   

The struggle of smoking cigarettes is finding someone to grab a smoke with, the smell, and the actual smoking. I did not want to be the weird one outside smoking alone; I wanted to have a nice semi-real conversation while half-enjoying a cigarette. The hard part of having mild OCD is having a smell linger when it is not supposed to. I had to keep gum and hand sanitizer on my person 24/7. This further complicates the seemingly relieving act of smoking. The lungs that I possess are not accustomed and welcoming to smoking, which is a good thing. This helped in my decision to quit smoking after the purchase of my first pack. Seeing the toll that it takes on my peers and the apparent dependency that it also causes makes it an unlikely vice for the likes of me.

According to The Lancet, a British medical journal, Chinese and British scientists have found there has been a spread of cigarettes in China. The article stated that two-thirds of all males smoked. More were still taking up the habit and more were starting as teenagers, which adds risk. Possibly the most startling statistic: a third of China’s teenagers are expected to die from their use of cigarettes.

At the University of Iowa, I’ve seen a big population of international students, many of them Chinese, alongside American students smoking cigarettes in alarming numbers. Not to sound like the advertisements attempting to get people to stop smoking, but that’s what it is going to sound like. Smoking is not worth it and the consequences are dire.