EudoraNews.com

Nervous parents needing the help of a steadying habit at the half time of a close game probably won't agree, but we support the efforts of a number of Eudora High School students to ban smoking on all school district property.

There are smokers who will see this as an unwelcome intrusion into their private affairs and just another example of a campaign to ostracize tobacco users. What, they would argue, is the harm of stepping outside during a break in a basketball game for a cigarette.

There is little chance anyone but fellow smokers would be affected by second-hand smoke (the same can not be said of those who smoke within the Laws Field confines during sporting events there).

We would counter that schools are for teaching. And adults taking a quick opportunity to grab a cigarette provide a very poor example to the young students attending school district events.

Forty-five years after the surgeon general first warned of the link between tobacco use and such diseases as cancer and heart disease and 38 years after broadcast tobacco advertising was banned, all should agree we should protect our children from the dangers of smoking. And though it would be naïve to think that any such ban won't end with many smokers traveling a bit farther for a cigarette, at least that wil not have the unofficial approval of the school district.

The students' request is deserving of the USD 491 Board of Educations support.