By: Nadia Tamez-Robledo

I write this as the orange glow of the cigarette in my left hand creeps steadily toward the yellow filter, turning the paper and tobacco inside to a tiny pillar of ash.

It has proven difficult to formulate an argument in favor of smoking. I suppose I really shouldn’t be surprised. How does one defend something that’s been so demonized? The answer lies in the very nature of the poll, which holds the socially acceptable answer in itself: “We want to know if you support a smoke-free environment to include all exterior grounds and parking lots owned or operated by UT Pan American.”

There it is.  Smoke-free campus, a phrase that harkens back to the afternoons many of us spent at grade school assemblies during Red Ribbon Week. Maybe future polls will ask things like,  “Do you think mean people are mean?”

The crushed corpse of cigarette one is on the ground now, and as I prepare for cigarette two, I’m wondering: Are we seriously talking about this?

I don’t know what the impetus for the poll was, so I can’t argue against the specific reasons behind it. Still, I feel like this issue would be more suited for one opinion page of my high school paper, but I suppose 70 percent of students polled would disagree.

I can understand no smoking in restaurants and bars. They’re closed spaces that can make it hard or impossible for nonsmokers and staff to escape the fumes. But banning it on the entire campus? Where it’s done in the open air? Where passers-by are subject to the smoke for a few seconds at most? Yeah, reasonable.

Some might argue that the cigarette butts are a hazard to the environment. Looking at all of the ones stomped into the soil around the shrubs outside the COAS building, that’s hard to deny.

The resolution? Smokers walk a few feet and toss them in the trash. They take up a whole lot less space than the empty soda bottles and empty drink cans and probably biodegrade just as easily.

I’m not too worried about a smoking ban, though. If the smoking ban is enforced the same way current policies are, I’d say that not much will actually change anyway.