Smoking… an Addiction or Accessory?

Imagine you are walking out of the library after a long intense study session and you can’t wait to walk through the security scanners and out the doors to a nice breath of fresh air. And you take a deep breath in, but instead of fresh springtime air, it’s a lungful of someone else’s smoke. Not quite what you had in mind after a long evening in the stuffy library now was it? But incase you didn’t know, one of the primary smoking zones on campus is right outside the library on the middle of library bridge, one of the most trafficked parts of campus during the day.

Although smoking is not condoned on campus, it isn’t forbidden either. There are designated smoking areas on campus, usually marked by waist high brown cones with a small ashtray. But have you ever noticed where these smoking cones are? Most likely they are near the entrances and exits to buildings, such that students can quickly put out their cigarette right before class, or light u right as they leave. Yes this is a free country, and everyone has the right to smoke, but what has smoking become?

To some smoking is a way to suppress hunger, or calm the nerves, but what initially motivates a person to light up for the first time? It seems that in the beginning a cigarette is used more to complete someone’s image, or perhaps their outfit. The cigarette is mostly associated with rockers, bikers, models, and rich old men. Did they start smoking just because they wanted to, or because it was what people who looked like them did? Are people just following what they are stereotyped as, or is it a completely conscious decision to smoke?

It may be safe to say that the “reasons” people begin to smoke are just side affects of smoking that they use as excuses to explain why they started smoking in the first place. Perhaps smoking can be blamed society, and the pressure people feel to fit what society sees them as. So has smoking just become an accessory?... A way to complete one’s outfit, to make a punk rocker look more badass?... Or a business man to look more prestigious?