Sometimes I see

How the brave new world arrives

And I see how it thrives

In the ashes of our lives

- ABBA, "Happy New Year"

On September 18, McMaster's Daily News announced that as of this coming Jan. 1 McMaster University will prohibit the use of tobacco and of oral smoking devices on all its properties, both inside and out, including the Westdale campus and the Ron Joyce Centre in Burlington.

This policy is an intrusion into personal freedom and lifestyle choice that is worthy of a totalitarian regime.

We must acknowledge that smoking tobacco causes various diseases, especially cardiovascular disease and lung disease, and that exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke causes lung disease. These effects are not universal, and show up when they do after some decades. A reasonable person will take these risks into account in deciding whether to start smoking, to cut down on smoking, to quit smoking, or to expose themselves voluntarily to second-hand tobacco smoke.

In a free society, however, adults should be able to make those decisions for themselves. People smoke for many reasons. A smoker of my acquaintance once called tobacco a "soothing stimulant". There is real pleasure, for some, in smoking. Smoking tobacco is also an occasion for informal socializing. Some smoke tobacco to calm their nerves when they feel stressed. And smoking is clearly physically addictive; sudden cessation brings unpleasant withdrawal symptoms, and many habitual smokers need a drag on their cigarette to ward off these pains. It is not self-evident that any smoker would be better off by ceasing to smoke.

The decision to stop or not to stop should be left to the smoker, while making available accurate and understandable information on the health risks of smoking.

Protection from involuntary exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke is a clear responsibility of any organization, given the World Health Organization's estimate that one in nine deaths from tobacco use are due to exposure of non-smokers to second-hand smoke. It is part of a good health and safety policy for a large employer like McMaster to protect its employees from involuntary exposure to second-hand tobacco smoke while they are on the job.

Protection from emissions from other people's smoking is one thing. Forbidding people to smoke is another. McMaster's President, Patrick Deane, justified the campus-wide smoking ban on the ground that smoking is "antagonistic to the direction of our research." This justification puts the university in the position of a nanny who makes sure that no student, staff or faculty member, or visitor is allowed to do anything on McMaster property that adversely affects their own health. The implications for food choice at campus eating places are obvious.

Control of one's smoking, drinking, eating and other self-regarding behaviour may be appropriate in the case of children, who lack the emotional and intellectual maturity to make decisions for themselves. But McMaster students, staff, faculty and visitors are adults. They should be allowed to make lifestyle choices for themselves without restrictions by university policy.

President Deane expresses sympathy for people who will find it challenging to cut down or cease smoking. He takes it to be a responsibility of the university to support people in doing so. These remarks reflect a welcome recognition of how difficult it is to stop smoking. The university's health services should indeed provide resources to help those on campus who want to quit smoking.

But the emphasis here should be on "want to quit." It is one thing to make help available to people who have decided to adopt a healthier lifestyle. It is another thing to forbid them to carry on with their present unhealthy lifestyle when they have not decided to change it.

In the worst case, the forthcoming "measures to help members of our community conform in a gradual way to the new order on smoking" could match in intrusiveness the worst excesses of Stalin's Russia and Mao's China.

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Let people make their own decisions on whether to smoke. Protect non-smokers from involuntary exposure to second-hand smoke and vapour by designating outside areas for smoking and vaping, with ash trays provided, in places downwind of building entrances and off the path of usual pedestrian routes. Make available in campus health services information about the health effects of smoking and resources to help people quit if they so choose.

But stop there.