Fag ends of freedom

A third of UK university campuses ban smoking. Martin Ball attacks the anti-smoking Hitlers

Imagine a world where one in three of the population is vilified for a lifestyle, forced to skulk in corners or evicted into the street. According to a survey of 90 British universities and colleges, this Orwellian nightmare is the reality for smokers on campuses today.

The survey, conducted by Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco), reveals that although 53 universities (including Birmingham, Durham, London and Sussex) reluctantly permit smoking in a handful of designated areas, (Aberdeen, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and St Andrews) ban it completely.

The worst offender is Luton University, where the no-smoking rule is not only "rigorously enforced" but "students who break the rule may be required to terminate their course of study". Can having a fag be such a "crime" that the perpetrator is threatened with expulsion?

Out of 90 universities, Exeter alone exhibits a modicum of sanity. "There is a need to act reasonably towards smokers," the university declares, "which means that people who wish to smoke should, where this is practically possible, have a place where they are able to do so." Compared with other universities, this is positively progressive.

But universities should beware. Their officially sanctioned discrimination against smokers could cost them some excellent members of staff. Smoking restrictions may also hasten the departure or early retirement of members of staff who find more congenial surroundings, dare one say it, in the private sector.

And the restrictions affect students as well as staff. Sometimes students are forced to stand out in the cold, while members of staff have the privilege of lighting up in their own office.

If normal standards of tolerance do not win the day, economic muscle might ultimately triumph. As students are increasingly paying their own way through university, consumer power could result in the demand that universities make provision for smokers being taken seriously.

For the discerning student, smoking accommodation could be just as important a factor as a university's quality of teaching and geographical location. Discrimination against smokers may even - as in my own case - lead to graduates refusing university appeals for financial donations in protest against smoking clampdowns.

All too often the reason advanced for introducing restrictions on smoking is the highly contentious suggestion that smokers are harming the health of non-smokers by so-called passive smoking. The mindless rush to accept such claims - which the Health and Safety Commission recently admitted would be "very difficult to prove given the state of the scientific evidence" - is sloppy thinking. Imposing prohibitions on the basis of bogus science is unethical and immoral.

Worse, discriminating against smokers has to be a betrayal of academia's traditional role in promoting the individual's right to free expression. Surely our universities should be big and confident enough to resist the cry of the mob? Britain's higher education institutions are elevated as bastions of civility where students are taught to be open-minded and tolerant towards those around them.

The fact that our leading centres of learning are so ready to engage in social persecution makes a mockery of their claim to be enlightened enclaves defending individual liberty. Sadly, they appear more concerned with implementing political dogma than understanding cultural diversity.

Those of us who care about the freedom of the individual to lead their own lives must resist attempts to turn Britain's campuses into politically correct mindsets governed by anti-smoking Hitlers. What next? A drive against drinking? A witchhunt on obesity? Martin Ball is campaigns director at Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco). He refuses appeals for money from his alma mater, Nottingham University.

Should universities be obliged to provide smoking booths for staff and students?

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