In defense of smokers

Blasphemous though it may be to admit this in the Spectator, I love Bwog’s series “Overheard.” I love it because 1) it makes me feel better about my own penchant for eavesdropping, and 2) it provides us with such gems as this:

“Little kid, maybe 13 years old, wearing a backpack walking with classmates. With a concerned look at the ashtrays outside of Hamilton: ‘I know there’s a lot of peer pressure at college, but why does everyone have to smoke so much?’”

Good question, kid.

This innocent probe caused a stir in the comment section on Bwog, with some people intimating that every smoker is just a “douche trying to look cool,” and others berating “militant anti-smokers” for their “desire to ban things” and their “herd mentality.” A surprising number of commenters argued about the “thick cloud of second-hand smoke” that hovers around the entrance to Butler.

One thing that did not come out of the debate, however, was a clear answer to the kid’s question (which is great for me, really, because now I get to talk about it in this column).

So then, why do we smoke?

I should start by saying that I don’t smoke, which might mean that I’m not the best person to be answering this question, but which hopefully also means that my end argument will be that much stronger. And rest assured that the following is more than mere guesswork—I talked to more than a few smoker friends before starting to write.

The first major point that came out of my friends’ explanations has to do with what members of our generation see as the biggest obstacle to smoking: namely, it kills (or, at the very least, it’s quite bad for your health). As far as reasons for not doing something go, this seems like a pretty good one, and it’s one that has been drilled into the collective American consciousness for the past 20 years. That 13-year-old was no doubt thinking of his foreboding health teacher and/or parent, when he expressed wonder at the idea of so many college kids smoking.

But what that 13-year-old failed to understand, and what so many of the Bwog commenters either didn’t get or couldn’t identify with, is the fact that smoking’s negative health effects are kind of the point: for some smokers, at least, lighting up is all about self-destructive behavior. Whether it’s a “fuck you to life,” as one friend suggested, an action that purposely separates you from a certain value system or group in society, or something you started because the people you look up to smoke for such reasons, this vice very consciously says something about your world outlook and self-image.

Of course, most college kids fully understand this, and the Bwog commenters who called smokers “douches trying to look cool” were probably referring to just such behavior. But criticizing smokers for trying to look cool is absurd—we’re all trying to look cool. You might not agree with the method (particularly one so hazardous to your health), but no one is saying you have to agree with it.

The other major motivations for smoking, which my friends noted, were considerably more innocuous. A lot of them mentioned the fact that cigarettes give you something to “do” in social situations in which you might not know anyone, or that they can make you feel socially connected to others. And, having started smoking, all of the people I talked to cited the pleasures of cigarettes—their ability to calm nerves, to produce a certain buzz, to provide an excuse to take a break, to suppress hunger. As I heard these people, I trusted talk about the upside of a habit I once considered nonsensical, and began to understand their position more fully.

And I guess that’s the point. I know I’ll never smoke—I like running too much and I’m probably not cool enough—but I’m not going to persecute others for choosing to do so. With modern bans on smoking indoors, we’ve done all we can to eliminate (in the public sphere, anyway) the threat of secondhand smoke. And I refuse to believe that walking past the smokers outside Butler a few times a week could be considered anything more than a nuisance (and one which it would take a violation of the rights of smokers to do away with). There was a lot of anger among those Bwog comments, but also a lot of genuine desire to understand why someone would take up cigarettes. And, if this article accomplishes anything, I hope it shows that the reasons people have for smoking are reasons to which a lot of us—as college kids—can relate. That being said, for my friends’ sake, I hope their cigarettes go the way of all our youthful markers of self-expression, but, if they don’t, well, I’ll understand.

Neil FitzPatrick is a Columbia College sophomore. Excuses and Half-truths runs alternate Tuesdays.