EDITORIAL: Assembly torches UNR’s smoking ban effort

A University of Nevada, Reno delegation was thoroughly schooled by lawmakers Wednesday in the very skill their institution is supposed to provide: critical thinking.

As reported Thursday by the Review-Journal’s Sandra Chereb, the delegation came before the Assembly Judiciary Committee in support of Senate Bill 339, which would authorize Nevada’s college campuses to impose rules against smoking that are stricter than state law.

Smoking is unhealthy and uncool. Cracking down on tobacco, on the other hand, is very cool. SB339 won unanimous approval in the Senate.

But the stomp-smoking crowd has a credibility problem that they’re seldom called out on. Not only is tobacco a legal product, and not only is its use by adults legal (with restrictions), the product is taxed to the hilt. Moreover, the very people who demand that tobacco users be shamed and exiled also support ever-more-punitive tobacco taxes and ever-larger sums of public money to be spent on government programs.

So it was quite something to see UNR President Marc Johnson, who wants to make his campus tobacco-free, asked to reconcile this policy disconnection.

And it was something more to see that he couldn’t.

“You want more money for higher ed,” said committee chairman Ira Hansen, R-Sparks. “But we’re going to tell people who pay the tax they have no right to smoke on a government campus.”

University leaders are all about diversity these days, but Mr. Johnson provided a textbook example of the lack of diversity of ideology that plagues so many college campuses. Neither Mr. Johnson nor any of his fellow smoking foes had given a single thought to the fact that smokers help fund higher education and might merit some consideration. After the hearing, he told Ms. Chereb he was taken aback by the questioning because public health concerns should outweigh tax issues.

Assemblyman Glenn Trowbridge, R-Las Vegas, continued the lesson by asking whether UNR would accept reduced state funding in exchange for the ability to ban tobacco and “bear the responsibility of the consequences.” Then he asked Caden Fabbi, president of the Associated Students of University of Nevada, how much more per credit he would be willing to pay to replace lost tobacco tax funding. Mr. Fabbi said student government supports a smoking ban.

Mr. Johnson, Mr. Fabbi and others simply cannot comprehend their hypocrisy. And that lack of comprehension is a result of an absence of intellectual rigor on issues that affect unpopular, oppressed minorities — the kind of people universities claim to champion.

The Assembly committee took no action, which was kind. It should have rejected SB339.