To the editor:

Although I am a proud non-smoker, I found myself respecting Bonnie Campo’s Oct. 8 editorial, “Don’t tell smokers new smoking ban policy is for their own good,” right until the end.

Ms. Campo stated that while she realizes “cancer sticks” cause health issues for some, she also asserts, “so is eating fried food from the cafeteria.”

Comparing food, however unhealthy it may be, to cigarettes, is simply ludicrous.

I suffer from severe allergies year ‘round, and walking through a haze of cigarette smoke makes me feel sick.

It causes me to choke and makes it hard for me to breathe. I know I am not the only person with such a condition.

But if I walk in close proximity to someone chomping down on a Big Mac, it isn’t going to adversely affect my health in the way that cigarette smoke can — and does.

Everyone should make an attempt at healthy eating, but if a person chooses to live off a diet of double bacon cheeseburgers and French fries, that is their choice. It is their own health they are compromising.

Cigarettes impact not only the smoker, but also everyone around them. I absolutely believe smokers have just as much right as the rest of us, but we have a right to breathe, too.

A much better solution would have been to make the courtyard the only area on campus where smoking is allowed.

This new rule doesn’t seem fair to smokers, but the old one prohibiting smoking near doorways — which smokers routinely ignored — wasn’t fair to the rest of us.