To the editor:
I would like to respond to assumptions and statements made by Gonzalo Lira '95 in his Dartmouth Diary entry on April 29, 1994.
Lira calls himself part of a "dwindling minority" of smokers. Actually, the rate of smoking among adolescents and college students has decreased 1 percent since 1981 -- hardly a substantial decline.
More significantly, Lira chooses to smoke, and he wonders why "pompous" students cannot allow him to do so in peace. I personally have never asked someone to refrain from smoking, but I can see why someone would. Smoking is a dangerous habit, but unlike some habits that endanger only the person involved, smoking is potentially harmful to others.
Lira insists that "Secondhand smoke is not an issue here" because he smokes in his room, but I disagree. There are people on my hallway who only smoke in their rooms, but this does not prevent the smoke from seeping under the door or escaping into the hallway each time the door is opened. Anyone who came to my room would be able to tell that there are smokers on my hall.
Cigarette smoke contains approximately 3,000 chemicals, including tar, nicotine and the potential mutagens benzopyrene and vinyl chloride. In a 1992 study of Italian women who died of accidental causes, almost all of the women who lived with a smoker had pre-cancerous lesions in their lungs; women who lived with non-smokers did not. We ask people not to drive while impaired by alcohol for fear they might kill themselves or someone else -- why not ask people not to smoke for the same reason?
But if the cancer-causing potential isn't persuasive, how about a more personal argument? As a severe asthmatic who has spent nearly a quarter of this academic year in Dick's House or the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center for breathing problems, the last thing in the world I need to come home to is a hazy hallway, and the last place I want to eat is in a smoke-filled restaurant.
I try not to let my disease limit what I do, but the rights of smokers have in the past impinged on my rights to go where I want to go, eat where I want to eat, or live where I want to live.
I am not a "pip-squeak administration-wanna-be" as Lira writes -- I am a member of a community. If I lived near him and kept him awake with my activities at 2 a.m., I hope that he wouldn't toss and turn in bed, but that he would ask me to be more quiet.
And I hope that if I asked him to not smoke where it would affect my health, he might do so -- not because playing music, smoking, having sex or jumping around to Seattle grunge are right or wrong, healthy or unhealthy -- these are not the issues.
I hope that we could respond to each other's requests because we appreciate that in a community, the needs of others have to be considered and respected. I will never demand that anyone stop smoking, for the same reasons that as a member of RAID, I will never force anyone to wear a condom. These decisions are yours to make. I am simply presenting another perspective and, I hope, information that may affect whether, and where, people choose to smoke.
KIMBERLY WILLIAMS '96
