I am writing this letter in response to the article published in The Daily Aztec on Feb. 20, 2013 titled, “Thank you for smoking at SDSU” by Mason Schoen.

I am a graduate student at SDSU getting my master’s degree in public health. After reading the article, I was very offended and appalled by the writer’s ignorance on the issue of smoking cigarettes. There is clear scientific evidence on the health effects of smoking and breathing in secondhand smoke, and he clearly had not done any research before writing the article. The data on tobacco is presented on such websites as The Surgeon General’s Report, the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization, which are all internationally reputable and world-leading health organizations. The author’s comments show his lack of knowledge and unawareness on a very grave matter. It is extremely insulting to be sarcastic and to compare people getting offended by cigarette smoke to the writer getting offended by “people wearing jorts.” Someone getting a college education who denies facts on the seriousness of smoking and talks about it lightly is embarrassing. I hope that his article did not reflect the views of the members at The Daily Aztec as a whole on smoking because that is now how SDSU should be represented. As a matter of fact, I believe SDSU should change its smoking policy so smoking is 100 percent banned from campus.