Designated Smoking Areas

Think about this carefully:

There is information available all over, openly and freely, regarding the effects of smoking. Yet, there are people who choose to smoke. And sometimes people who smoke also happen to be very good in a subject or art or skill (although I am by no means implying a correlation here 😅!).

Now say Albert Einstein (who smoked the pipe) or Richard Feynman (who smoked cigarettes) was available to teach Physics at universities today. What would be our choice: A) Focus on the Physics they are teaching OR B) Do not allow them to teach because they smoke 😅?

I would choose Option A without blinking 😅! I want to learn Physics from the best Physicists available to teach! For everything else, I have my own intelligence to use and will make my own choices! That responsibility simply DOES NOT lie on anyone else's shoulders!

In fact, as it so happens to be the case, I've had very good teachers in school and professors at my universities who smoked. It never bothered either me, or my classmates, or our parents. Our focus was simply on learning the subjects being taught. For everything else, we were required to use our own intelligence!

Likewise, when I go to an art gallery, or browse and buy books at a bookstore, or go for a concert, whether the painters, authors and musicians in question smoke or not, or drink or not, or are married or unmarried, etcetera etcetera, are simply not my concerns! These questions just do not arise in my mind! My concern is only the art, the books, the music!

But what's happening today in colleges and universities and the world in general is something else altogether! I am seeing smokers "get cancelled"! Entire university campuses have become "No Smoking" zones! Whether someone is a smoker or not has started to affect job interview results!

This is ridiculous 😅!

What needs to happen is this: Just like airports have designated smoking areas, college and university campuses (and workplaces in general) need to have designated smoking areas. That's all. Let smokers exercise their choice of smoking as long as they do it in designated areas. The rest of the people can exercise their choice to not smoke, and not be affected by smoke, everywhere else! That's all.

We need to stop mixing personal and professional matters! This is childish!