22 CommentsNow that Columbia’s buildings (and the 25 feet surrounding those buildings) are officially smoke-free, the ashtrays in front of Hamilton — the longtime home of many a clove extinguished in the minutes before a humanities class — have been turned into flower pots.
The War on Tobacco has taken a most poetic turn.
Photo by Joseph Meyers
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22 Comments
@... top six reasons why smoking is hard to give up:
1) you meet people from all walks of life that you would otherwise never speak to.
2) awkward social situation? excuse me, i need to go feed my addiction.
3) showing up early to things sucks, you wait for other people. if you smoke a cigarette, you magically get transported to soviet russia, where other people wait for you!
4) sometimes when working on a hard problem, a solution can be quickly found by going out for a smoke.
5) if you’re doing any sort of indoor-sitdown job/project, it’s an excuse to go outside and at least give your bodyclock some light exposure.
6) going to bars alone and just sitting there is kinda weird. going to bars alone and going out for a smoke every so often is less so. again, you meet people.
and i guess, the reasons why it’s easy:
1) growing old is scary. but growing old to be the fat dude in the scooter with an oxygen tank. frightening.
2) it does have an affect on athletic ability. and it can cause a general lethargy.
3) coughing up crap sucks.
4) slow painful death by cancer would not be fun.
5) some people are put off if you and your clothes reek of cigarettes.
6) it’s a gateway drug to either east village/williamsburg or reno nevada. you’ll never know which until it’s too late…
@... praise jayzus.
@carly wait cigs are bad for you?
@I hate smokers Why can’t they be normal and just drink all day instead like the rest of us?
@phil is it because your life feels empty without some ritual?
@but all the cool kids are doing it
@What do you call it when someone farts in the middle of a hurricane?
A wind-wind situation!
@well, i have to say they’re much prettier.
the older i get, the more smoking annoys me. my appreciation for plants also has been increasing with age, so this is truly a win-win situation.
@good i get sick of walking through the clouds, produced by freshmen hipsters outside hamilton trying out their first cigs
@Or... 50 feet in front of Lewisohn!
@Now they'll be flower pot smoking!
@... hunger strike for smokers’ rights! i’m living only on dip and cigarettes until columbia ceases this mindless bigotry and replaces those sacred icons of our nicotine culture. how dare they efface our proud history and green-wash it with the symbols of the neo-liberal-environmental health regime!
@... good luck with that.
that said. the sentiment is nice, but taking away ashtrays isn’t going to get people to stop smoking. it’s just going to get them to stop putting their butts in ashtrays.
if you _really_ want to get people to stop smoking, put together a comprehensive program. combine free nrt with an increasingly vigorous exercise program through the gym. make it a PE course that aims to reacquaint smokers with healthy habits.
@Anonymous I see you have been using italics on gchat. As have I, my friend, _as have I_ .
@but Health Services already has a smoking cessation program including free OTC NRT for anyone who pays the Health Services fee (a.k.a all full-time students plus some part-time): http://www.health.columbia.edu/docs/services/pcms/cess.html There’s one-on-one counseling, patches, gum, Chantix, etc. The gym people are going to have to do on their own, I guess.
@bad assumption Who says all smokers have bad health habits? I smoke, run 2 miles a day (used to be 7.5 last year, slowly getting myself up to that mark again after a summer of sloth), strength train 3-5 times a week, watch what I eat, and many more things most non-smokers don’t do.
Your thoughtless profiling offends me. Please be prepared to hear from Columbia’s office of multicultural whatever. :P
@because smoking IS a bad health habit…
@umm what’s to prevent people from putting out their cigarettes in the potted plant?
@hopefully the righteous fist of someone who likes plants, as I do.
@huh it looks like the flower pot on the right switched to big-boy pants a little too soon…
@hooray! That’s twenty-five more feet of clearance between me and the hipsters, and I get flowers to boot!
@those don’t look like flowers…they look like MAN-EATING PLANTS
fitting for Hamilton (talking about you Yatrakis)