(PATRICK COCKRELL 03/12/2021) This past weekend at the Shriner’s College Classic, the Ramblin’ Raiders enjoyed a wonderful Texas Tech beat-down of the Sam Houston State Bearkats at the Juice Box, A.K.A. Minute Maid Park, and while enjoying a few brews also decided to enjoy a few drags from the Juul. This happened to upset the staff and our boy Lane was told that vaping was not allowed inside the stadium. Lane promptly apologized and stated he did not know and was told by the staff member that “not knowing was not an excuse.” This week’s Hot Takes with Laney Cakes on Episode 87 of the Ramblin’ Raiders Podcast and this write-up were inspired by these events.
We decided to bring you a write-up to continue further discussions of vaping at outdoor sporting events and the Ramblin’ Raiders say, “Free the Vape!”. Now we understand that vaping is not exactly something one does for positive health, well, possibly stress relief, but we will not delve much into that here, but vaping outdoors at a sporting event? Why can we not do this? We are outdoors after all; it isn’t like we’re bringing out the death sticks inside the United Supermarkets Arena where there is no where for the smoke to go. Jackson made a wonderful point in the episode, in the United States, we used to be able to smoke a cigarette on an airplane with a drink in hand and nowadays we can’t enjoy breathing in vapor at an outdoor sporting event.
The Ramblin’ Raiders do understand that smoking is not a particularly attractive action and ballparks may not want smoking/vaping inside to provide a “family friendly” environment and we would not argue that point at all if the same stadiums were not allowing people to become belligerently drunk at games while also saying people are not allowed to smoke. At the very least there should be smoking areas so that dedicated smokers/vapers have a place to call their own while still getting to enjoy a day or evening at the ballpark. There should not be a double standard to people who drink and people who smoke, or heck, people who like to enjoy them both simultaneously. All we have to say now is FREE THE VAPE!
WRECK ‘EM TECH!
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