'Smoking down 79 per cent on Trinity College campus but vaping up', reported the Irish Independent this week.
That was the headline. The actual report was a little more nuanced:
Trinity College in Dublin has seen a 79pc reduction in observed smokers on its campus following the introduction of restrictions.
Note the words 'observed' and 'restrictions'.
Inevitably, if you impose localised restrictions on where people can smoke, the number of 'observed' smokers in that area will drop.
It doesn't mean that significantly fewer students are smoking, though, and certainly not by as much as the headline might imply.
In reality all that happens is that smoking is displaced from one area to another.
I remember this happened when, in 2004, the Oxford Union banned smoking in its previously profitable bar.
Many students voted with their feet and started drinking in the local pubs where smoking wasn't banned. As a result the Union found itself losing so much money they had to reverse the ban a few months later.
Likewise, after the introduction of indoor smoking bans in England, Scotland and Wales, a significant number of urban, land-locked pubs closed because many smokers switched to pubs that had outdoor areas where they could light up.
Hospital smoking bans are another example. Far from being stubbed out, smoking is merely displaced from one location to another (often to the annoyance of local residents).
But this post is about students.
Last weekend, as I wrote here, I visited Old College, part of the University of Edinburgh.
Prominent signs informed students, staff, and visitors that neither smoking nor vaping is permitted in the large open air quad.
It's unclear what impact this and other restrictions have had on the number of students who smoke, but I was told that smoking is still common among students in Edinburgh.
So with that and the Irish Independent story in mind, I went online and found this:
Walking into campus through the Arts Block one morning, I was confronted by a screen declaring Trinity a “tobacco-free campus”. Not only was I surprised, having not heard this once in my six months of studying here, but my confusion was further justified once I walked past the arts block and saw the revolving cast of smokers standing outside. Trinity may declare itself tobacco free, but it is certainly not in practice.
See 'Student social smoking at an all-time high in Dublin' (Trinity News, April 2022).
I also found this – The Tab Student Smoking Survey 2021 – which revealed that '52 per cent of students who took our survey say they smoke cigarettes'.
That figure surprises me, if I'm honest, but one explanation (other than the fact that it was a self-selecting poll) is that many students, as the Trinity News article suggests, are social smokers who enjoy the occasional cigarette when they are out drinking with friends.
They are not, in any sense, heavy smokers, nor are they addicted to smoking.
I can’t imagine that any of them will be taking to the streets demanding the right to smoke, and I doubt that many would even consider themselves to be libertarian, politically speaking.
But what's happening is nevertheless a quiet rebellion against the killjoys who want to dictate how they live their lives.
Don't forget that most undergraduates have only recently left school, and home. Age wise they are mostly young adults and going to college is often the first step to becoming fully independent of their parents.
Unless your mum and dad are hard-core anti-smokers, having the occasional cigarette while sharing a drink with your mates is – on a scale of one to ten – nearer one than ten as an act of defiance. In other words, it really isn't a big deal.
So to those who want the nation's campuses to be smoke free, the message is simple. Evidence suggests that, even when smoking is banned, it doesn't stop students smoking.
And to the person who read the Trinity story and wrote, "God, not like that in my day, must be depressing being a student now", I don't think things are as bad as they might appear.
Students are still having a good time and if they want to smoke they will find a way. Furthermore, very few of their peers will disapprove or consider it anything other than perfectly normal.
In fact the biggest threat to today's students is not the war on smoking and drinking, but the increasingly frequent attacks on freedom of speech.
But that's another matter ...