Have smoking bans jumped the shark?

September 16, 8:55 AMCivil Liberties ExaminerJ.D. Tuccille

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At Pennsylvania's Clarion University, something remarkable happened yesterday: a "smoke-in" defying state law. No, it wasn't a pro-marijuana protest; it was a pro-tobacco protest -- and that's remarkable.

About 50 Clarion University of Pennsylvania students protested a new ban on smoking on state-owned campuses today, calling the prohibition that forbids lighting up even outdoors unfair and unenforceable. ...

University officials handed them yellow cards warning them that they risk fines or disciplinary action. Some of the protesters responded by putting tobacco on the cards, rolling them up and lighting them so they could be smoked.

It's not just Clarion University. The new ban has been interpreted as applying even to outdoor spaces at colleges and universities, because classes and events are often held in the open air. Responses by ticked-off students have been widespread.

With virtually no warning, smoking at 14 of Pennsylvania's state-owned universities has been banned anywhere on campus — even outdoors.

The action has sparked protests around the state by some of the 110,000 students in the State System of Higher Education, who received word of the ban by e-mail late Wednesday — a day before a new state law forbidding smoking in most workplaces and public spaces took effect. ...

Students who feel the policy is too extreme have organized peaceful protests of smokers and sympathetic nonsmokers on at least three of the 14 Pennsylvania campuses, and there is talk of a coordinated statewide demonstration later this week.

College campuses are one of the more reliable cultural barometers. They're not consistently libertarian, and they're not consistently authoritarian. But, from marijuana to speech codes, they are good indicators of where the culture is going at the moment, and what the attitude of young adults is toward current legal trends.

So when college students start protesting smoking bans as excessively intrusive, arguing, "I'm standing outside. I should have the right to smoke outside," there's a good chance that the tidewaters of the anti-smoking jihad have reached their high water mark and are beginning to recede.

Pennsylvania's statewide ban, passed in June and signed by Governor Ed Rendell, was intended to be wide-reaching, with even more intrusions promised by the bill's sponsor, who regretted the exemptions required to win political support. "I believe that within several years we are going to see legislation to strengthen the law and place more broad restrictions on all public places in the state," State Senator Stewart Greenleaf told reporters.

That intolerant, prohibitionist attitude may have produced the sort of legislative overreaching that sparks public reactions -- and gets college kids marching in opposition.