The Ames Tobacco Task Force is trying to make the case that Onion’s, a convenience store on the ground level of the Memorial Union that was recently cited for selling cigarettes to a minor, should stop selling tobacco products.

If the store violated the state’s tobacco laws, they obviously should be punished. If they have repeated violations, the store will probably lose its tobacco license as well, as they should, if that were to happen. That’s one of the government’s chosen ways to keep cigarettes out of the hands of young people.

That’s a good thing. Cigarettes are addictive, especially for younger smokers. Albeit a bit arbitrary, the age of 18 seems like a reasonable time to let people start slowly killing themselves if they want to.

The problem is that the task force, a loose group of about 25 volunteers that was almost single-handedly responsible for pushing the city council to ban smoking in restaurants and bars before 8:30 p.m., is using this one violation to further its pre-set, outspoken agenda to stamp out legal tobacco use wherever and whenever it can.

“Any opportunity we have to make tobacco less acceptable to a younger group of people is an opportunity we will take,” said Andrew Goedeken, co-chairman of the task force, in a May 23 Daily article.

But cigarettes sold at a convenience store on a college campus are obviously targeted at college students, nearly all of whom are of legal smoking age. Banning cigarettes at Onion’s would only inconvenience students who smoke by not giving them a location on campus to buy cigarettes. It is not going to make them stop smoking.

This has nothing to do with keeping cigarettes out of the hands of the young. It is a reflection of the task force’s true goal to completely abolish all public smoking, and to drastically reduce the availability and increase the cost of tobacco products. Task force members made that clear last year, when they said shortly after the limited smoking ban passed that they considered it a first step toward a much stronger law.

“The main reason we are doing this is because tobacco kills,” said George Belitsos, co-chairman of the task force, in the May 23 Daily article.

Yes, smoking kills, just like thousands of other chemicals found in products sold at Onion’s. It kills just like alcohol, which you can get at the Maintenance Shop and the Recreation Center in the Memorial Union.

This is just another attempt by the task force to chip away at the rights of people to indulge in a legal substance they know is dangerous and at the rights of business owners to sell whatever legal products they want to meet the needs of their customers. We hope neither Onion’s nor the union’s board of directors sign on with the task force’s radical agenda.

Editorial Board: Dave Roepke, Erin Randolph, Charlie Weaver, Megan Hinds, Rachel Faber Machacha