Dusk Through Narrow Streets

I should say this right up front: I’m a conservative, but I absolutely loathe smoking. When it comes to smoking, I’m all for the nanny state, I hate it that much. I honestly don’t care that much if other students want to burn their own lungs out, as long as they don’t do it around me, but secondhand smoke kills too, and the last thing I want is to get lung cancer or something because of someone else’s gross habit.

It’s bad enough at home–you’d think college students would be smart about this kind of thing, but apparently not–where you can’t walk across campus without walking through at least a couple clouds of smoke. Turkey was awful that way. Everyone smokes there. Everyone. The only place I could get away from it was inside my hotel rooms (unless someone was smoking in theirs) and inside our van. Our guide and driver would light up even on a five-minute pit stop, and everyone smoked inside hotels, restaurants, everywhere. (Right in front of no-smoking signs, at times…especially since there was usually a nice ash-tray next to the no-smoking sign. Go figure.)

It’s better here, at least more like home in that smoking indoors is a big no-no, but it does seem that virtually everyone on campus smokes. Which is…kind of weird, really, since things are apparently much more liberal here, and anti-smoking campaigns are often seen as something of a liberal thing. But more on that double standard later.