Smoking is not a disability

As a daily reader of the IDS during my four years at IU, I came to accept the fact that most opinion columnists are a bunch of wacky liberals trying desperately to force their ideas onto the usually reasonable student body. What I did not realize, however, was that they would resort to spouting off random, incorrect statements in their columns. But in her Nov. 6 column “Blowing Smoke,” Grace Low does exactly that. She seems to be under the impression that there are no legal decisions regarding smoking as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act. If she did basic junior high-level research, she might have found the decision in Brashear v. Simms, 138 F. Supp. 2d 693, 695, where the Judge writing the opinion states that “smoking, whether denominated as ‘nicotine addiction’ or not, is not a ‘disability’ within the meaning of the ADA.” That seems pretty clear to me. I guess this is just one more IDS opinion writer whose column students would be better off skipping over.