By Will Senar

The Boston Parks and Recreation Department  recently unanimously voted to ban smoking lighted or vaporized substances from the city’s 250 plus parks. The ban has also been supported by  former Mayor Thomas M. Menino who proposed the ban last November.

What is interesting about the ban is that it bans all types of smoking from parks, including marijuana and e-cigarettes. While still considered a drug, marijuana is not known to have harmful effects on the body and is even used as a prescription medication. E-cigarettes are considered the safe alternative of smoking tobacco cigarettes so banning it from parks forces some people to think “Are they eventually going to make smoking illegal?”

While that is unlikely, people do have the right to be worried about the ban. It limits where people can smoke and seeing that people can’t smoke indoors and now they can’t do it in parks, there’s only one place they can do it: sidewalks, where people are more susceptible to secondhand smoke. This could then drive the city to ban smoking from these places as well.

Some non-smokers even feel that the ban is a little extreme and find it ridiculous that smoking is banned in parks while people can smoke in sidewalks at any time where the non-smokers are more exposed to the secondhand smoke, both from the smoke they exhale and the smoke from the cigarettes.

The ban also raises some eyebrows in Suffolk since the SGA has reportedly been interested in banning smoking at the entrance of Sawyer where students usually group together to smoke outside. The issue is overcrowding near the entrance and how it negatively affects non-smokers passing the building or students trying to get to class who do not want to smell like smoke. But it also alienates smokers and makes it seem like they aren’t thinking about the well-being of their fellow students.

When thinking about this ban, one can’t help but remember the South Park episode “Butt Out.” In the episode, anti-smoking lobbyists are portrayed as evil masterminds who want to ban smoking and are also willing to kill a child to help their cause while also portraying tobacco companies as people who respect people’s freedom of choice. The show also criticizes that even though there are so many other leading causes of death in Americans, smoking is singled out and treated unfairly just because they don’t like it.

While it is ridiculous to think that people who only have our health as their priority are evil, the ban limits our right to choose whether we want to smoke or not. Through the years there have been limits implemented on smoking. Some cities have banned smoking inside bars and it is weird that someone cannot open a bar specifically for people who want to smoke indoors or people who don’t mind being exposed to smoke. These restrictions have grossly limited smokers’ rights. People always consider how non-smokers feel but completely forget about smokers’ feelings on the matter. This can cause a feeling of alienation for them and to be looked at as the problem.

It just seems like this ban is trying to help us stay healthier without any ulterior motives, but it could have been done with more involvement from those who disagree so that there would be a better discussion from both sides so they can create a law that benefits everyone equally.