New Smoking Ban

This is not a good year to be a smoker. Recently, both Evanston and Chicago enacted bans on smoking in restaurants and bars. Now, it appears that state law has banned smoking in college dorms.

Hmm . . . my instant analysis (instanalysis?):

Pros
No potential fires in the dorms. There's always some irresponsible moron who's this close to burning the entire building to the ground.

No more dorm rooms that smell like an ash tray. If you're a non-smoker, moving into these rooms is a punishment.

Cons
Now that they can't smoke in their rooms, they're going to smoke out by the doors. This results in "the cloud" hanging by the doors when you want to enter and leave. Very gross. Additionally, while they would clean it up in their rooms, most smokers, while outdoors, tend to flick their butts in any old direction. While I haven't seen as much of this at Northwestern, ISU's campus was disgusting by the doors and along sidewalks due to the insane number of butts.

Savvy students will still smoke in their rooms. While most universities place smoke detectors in every student's room (at least, in those places with smoking bans already), most dedicated smokers know a creative way or two around that. This is especially true of those who prefer illicit smokeables.

Overall? While I support the idea in general, we have Mommy Blagojevich stepping in to keep us safe from ourselves. It really should have been left to each school to decide this for itself, especially since most schools offer separate smoking/smoke-free dorms. But from him, I wouldn't have expected any different.