Mark Twain once said, “As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.”
Unfortunately, not all share Mr. Clemens’ awesome proclivities toward ingesting carcinogens, particularly the Pepperdine student body. In fact, it seems to me that in the minds of Pepperdine students, there are few things more condemnable than smoking cigarettes — namely, driving anything less than a Lexus or having to live through the canyon. But as a frequent cigarette quitter myself, I think it is time that someone goes to bat for the marginalized, persecuted Pepperdine smoker.
It’s a Tuesday afternoon and you’re on your way to Payson to bang out a few hours of O-Chem or whatnot. As you walk down the staircase, you discover a hoard of smokers, a ragamuffin cluster of low-life fire-breathers. You cough, though from pure psychology. Now walking by them and disgusted by their life choices, you throw up a pair of invisible blinders or perhaps you simply look down to your Sperrys. You have no duty to these people. They have subjected themselves to sweet poison, and their irrational vice has rendered them sub-human, and so you treat them with justice. You’ve stripped them of their identities. Perhaps at a time they had families and dreams, names and passions … but now, they are simply smokers.
Later, passing by the CAC, your stomach turns at the first whiff of a robust, Turkish gold. You whisper to a friend, mumbling about a family member and secondhand smoke. Maybe this time, you feel particularly enflamed, you turn and say: “Don’t you know smoking takes 10 minutes off your life?”
In the Platonic spirit, you have lifted this obtuse vagabond from the bonds of ignorance. Certainly, your comments will contribute to genuine change and self-betterment.
Now I understand the flourishing moral intuitions that people are beginning to express in regard to health and purity of body. In no way do I endorse smoking, or even attempt to justify the smoker rationale; it simply cannot be done. However, there tends to be a fine line between reasonable tolerance of personal life decisions and the Hester Prynn-esque shame culture that has been established. Sure, it seems defensible that Pepperdine has distinct smoking areas, and restricts others to ensure maximum purity of air. However, these areas are getting increasingly obscure, pushing smokers into the nooks and crannies of campus, creating the perception of a nicotine-driven Smeagol looming in the shadows.
Certainly, marginalizing the clandestine smoker to the ghettoes of Pepperdine is enough, right? Wrong. To ensure deterrence, there seems to be a normative expectation to gratuitously shame the smoker — be it in look or in word — I assure you the public scorn accrued from dropping your Marlboro Light moments before you step into Celebration Chapel is as equally disillusioning as Hawthorne’s scaffold.
Is the smoker not human too? Is this one life choice so abhorrent that you turn your nose and scoff? Maybe. But I’m inclined to think that someone who assents to this kind of treatment might not like how wide the scope of this justification extends. The argument seems to run: 1) Smoking is annoying. 2) Smoking is bad. 3) If something is annoying and bad, then you should not do it. 4) Therefore, you should not smoke.
If this is our line of reasoning, it looks like the Waves Cafe, Pepperdine College Republicans and Pinterest are going to have to go also. I find all these things inexorably obnoxious and utterly devoid of the good. Listen, I get the aversion to smoke, you find it irresponsible and you’re sick of me forcing it in your face. Now you know how I feel about Convoca — but I digress. Let me qualify: I am not suggesting that anyone go pick up a pack of cigarettes. In fact, if you never have, don’t. But it does seem that there was once a pleasant coexistence amongst smokers and non-smokers (i.e. Applebee’s in the 90s), but now an air of smoke-free entitlement has impinged upon the liberty and welfare of freethinking individuals across the Pepperdine campus. Give me respiratory complications, or give me death (whichever comes first)!
