In order to address the nation’s smoking epidemic, it’s essential to end tobacco use among young people. About 99 percent of adults who smoke every day started when they were 26 or younger, according to the surgeon general ’s 2012 report to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For the benefit of smokers and people breathing in secondhand smoke, each community college and campus belonging to the University of Maine System should ban tobacco use. Eliminating smoking does not mean setting up designated smoking spots. It means completely prohibiting tobacco use and instituting punishments for violations.
A recent fire at a designated smoking gazebo at the University of Maine at Presque Isle was quickly contained. But it sparked debate about having a smoke-free campus. Some people argue that eliminating designated smoking areas would create inconveniences, as students would have to drive or walk off campus to smoke.
But when a majority of people say on campus surveys that they want their colleges to be smoke-free, and it’s clearly healthier for them to be smoke-free, actually making them smoke-free should be a natural step. Inconveniencing students is unfortunate, but it’s much more important for the campuses to show they are serious about fighting tobacco use.
Many campuses have already done laudable work to become smoke-free. The University of Maine, the University of Maine at Farmington and Kennebec Valley Community College in Fairfield all ban smoking. The University of Maine at Augusta and the University of Southern Maine are scheduled to become smoke-free at the start of 2013.
The University of Maine at Presque Isle and Northern Maine Community College allow smoking at designated spots. However other colleges have found that banning tobacco altogether is more effective than having the specified smoking areas.
Youth smoking in the U.S. fell quickly from 1997 to 2004, and since then it has tapered slowly, from 24.4 percent in 2003 to 18.7 percent in 2010. Prevalence has fallen among adults, from 21.6 percent in 2003 to 19.3 percent in 2010, according to the surgeon general ’s report. The problem is not that programs or efforts haven’t worked but that they haven’t been applied broadly or consistently.
This is an opportunity for UMPI and other schools to join the wider effort. They can show that they understand the tremendous public health and financial costs tobacco has on Maine and the nation.
Some people argue that smoking is a personal choice and that students are not paying tuition to be told what to do. But — aside from the fact that students may still smoke off campus — many people are affected by students’ decisions to smoke. Taxpayers subsidize their education and may end up paying for their future health care.
Schools also have an obligation to provide a safe environment for all students. Of every three young smokers, one will quit and one will die from tobacco-related causes, according to the CDC. Many people do not consider long-term effects when they start smoking, but it is the leading cause of preventable death in the U.S. Schools educate students in health-related classes about these dangers, and it makes sense for them to follow what they teach.
For a ban to be effective, schools should take a holistic approach. That’s why it’s important for campuses to not only create an environment where it’s harder for people to smoke but also ensure cessation-support services are available and affordable. The approach also should include getting rid of smoking entirely, not relying on designated smoking gazebos.
Thank you Rob Reiner. What a shame there are no direct flights from Bangor back to California. While i am not a tobacco user, i respect their rights. If i am offended by smoke, i can go somewhere else.
I was thinking this exactly!!!!! Look, as long as smoking cigarettes is legal then leave it alone. Yes I can see not subjecting people to discomfort within proximity of the smoker but, again, as long as it is legal space should be provided for people to smoke. These consumers are being taxed and ostracized into a sub-citizen group. Leave em alone for crying out loud. That, or make smoking illegal.
Three cheers for the nanny state! Let’s socialize education and healthcare, and then use that as an excuse to tell everyone how to live their lives, right down to every personal habit.
If you don’t like this approach, google “Free State Project” and start planning your move to New Hampshire.
Oh, you mean the “Live Free AND Die” State?
Be sure to ask the neighbors who will have all the smokers in their front yards. They shouldn’t be left out. Don’t act like they don’t exist.
Ask the neighbors about the car and truck exhaust that they are exposed to all day every day.
Remember: “Friends don’t let friends be prigs.”
Priggish to want to avoid the acrid stench, the asthma, the respiratory distress? More like intelligence and respecting our freedom–to be free of smoke.
If these smoking areas are outside and away from buildings, secondhand smoke is not an issue.
Not to mention the ZERO risk from second hand chewing tobacco, which is also banned from UM and other campuses. I mean, really-it is against university policy to chew tobacco in your own car in the farthest corner of the farthest parking lot when no one else is around. Thank God they don’t have surveillance cameras everywhere yet…
Free from smoke in a congested parking lot with idling cars….that’ll save us!
Thank you for being so worried about my health and for knowing what’s best for me. I’m a grown man and know all about the dangers of smoking but as long as I do it in such a way that doesn’t affect others (i.e. don’t stand near a doorway, try to stay downwind of people, etc) then I say to you do gooders STFU!
Your concern for the rest of us is so gratifying. Granted, better than the imperial attitude of some smokers but we can still do without your smoking.
An imperial attitide is taken by those who would take away smoking areas that pose no risk to non-smokers.
The indoctrination & division is
never ending. Multi this, multi that. Groups against groups. Personal freedoms
against conformity. It all seems like such a noble idea to the crusaders. What
was it Martin Niemöller said? All good
until they came for me…
If you’re a smoker the grim reaper will come for you. Early.
Maybe, maybe not. And think of all the non-smokers who die from heart disease caused by unhealthy food like what UM serves its students. There’s no guarantee for anyone.
Yes what are the limits to a forced lifestyle? What we smoke, we eat, how much exercise we take daily, alcohol consumption, what kind of vehicle we drive, how big our soft drink containers are, who we have sex with or marry, who we have children with (what if one parent has a predisposition for conceiving children with diabetes?), where does it all end? A slippery slope indeed! You cannot legislate morality or lifestyle. One man’s bad habits are another’s way of life. There is the argument that your bad habit of smoking/drinking/weight are costing me healthcare dollars. But what about my own bad habits which may end up costing healthcare dollars in the long run. I think in aggregate it all sort of levels out. As a culture and a society we are bound to each other but that doesn’t mean we have the right to “normalize” the group so that risk is minimized. In fact, on reason for inclusion in a demographic group is to share risk and thus to minimize impact.
Depending on which study one
references, a smoker can expect to live up to 25 years less on average than a
non smoker. Seems that would be a considerable savings in SS & Medicare so
it may indeed “even out.” The problem
indeed, is where does the intrusion on private lives end?
True enough. When does “the common good” take precedence over the rights of the individual?
My Mother, Grandmother, and my Father never smoked. All three died from a lung disease.
My grandmother did too. Poor soul developed lung cancer at 92. She was otherwise healthy and quite “with it” so this was a particularly sad way to pass. So lung disease doesn’t always originate from the smoking of cigarettes. That said I acknowledge that smoking isn’t a healthy thing and certainly will up the odds you do develop lung issues. I am a former smoker, about 30 years worth, and finally quit 15 years ago. It was very hard to quit too! But as I say elsewhere, if this activity is legal then it needs to be allowed. Lets be honest here. All those additional taxes aren’t really meant to curb smoking. Uh uh. These taxes are just an opportunistic way of raising revenue. I wonder how many thousands of Mainers go to NH now for butts and booze because of the outrageous tax imposed on these products. Any product deemed unhealthy or “sinful” will be exploited in this way. Like other products, fast food is already heavily taxed and it is only a matter of time before the opportunists will use anti-obesity issues to increase the sin tax on these products too. Personally I don’t eat that food, I find it very offensive and hate the smell just driving by one of these food outlets. But, as long as it is legal I don’t think it should be taxed any more than any other product nor persecuted and ostracized into a hidden kind of underworld that nobody dares to speak about. Ditto for liquor or cigarettes. If you want to stop people from smoking, overeating, drinking, etc then at least have the fortitude to advocate for making them illegal.
But did their spouses smoke?
Stop telling us how to live already!
Give is the information, treat us like adults, and let us make our own freaking decisions.
And stay on some remote island from the rest of us.
Don’t forget, some of these campuses are TOBACCO free, which means that they ban all tobacco, including chewing tobacco.
They are banning this to protect us from ourselves-there is not an issue of second hand chewing tobacco. Meanwhile, they continue to sell high fat and high sugar foods to the people. Why the hypocrisy? Because the hip cool thing is to plaster the campuses with “No Smoking” signs, tell people that they need to help keep the campus tobacco-free, and ignore the real issues on campus. But it looks good!
Second hand chewing tobacco is a real killer, don’t ya know.
Got a spittoon?
So, do you have your own spittoon for that second hand chewing tobacco? The signs and policy are not just “hip”, they’re intelligent, practical. If you don’t like the food, don’t buy it, there are alternatives. if you don’t want smoke, son’t smoke. Oh yeah, we don’t but we have to put up with the abusers of our freedoms.
One ther thing, as before, don’t expect any sympathy, chewers, when you come down with mouth or throat cancer.
People who smoke know what’s what…as long as there is a designated spot for smokers what is the big problem last I knew cigs are legal!! Give smokers a break already….just another way for the gov’t to control people…getting tired of it really, smokers rights are going to be a thing of the past if they keep doing this…no smoking here, no smoking there…time to stand up…what happened to the land of the free???
We ARE free! We are just not as free as we used to be! We are as free as the children in the playground under the watchful eye of the noon-aid….
Control? Aren’t smokers adversely affecting the rest of us? Land of the free? Free to be a public nuisance? The rest of us want to be free too–of your obnoxious habit.
I agree
I smoked for over 20 years, starting at age 12. I loved it, until I didn’t, and when I wanted to stop, it was tough for me to find enough support to do so. Eventually I did. That was 1990.
Now I do this thing I call buttkicking full time. I call what I do Kick Butts, Take Names. I talk with smokers, often in the street. Stats tell us 70% want to kick tobacco.
Some tell me they’re desperate to stop, that they think about it all the time, that they don’t know how. It’s great to give them free and inexpensive ways to do that. This stuff works.
30% of smokers do not want to stop. They don’t want to hear what they should and shouldn’t do.
Like them, I’ve always bristled at the use of the word “should.” When I was smoking and heard the word or consciousness of should, I smoked more.
Even now, that word and consciousness still gets me digging in my heels, even if I agree on some level with the point that’s being expressed.
None of us likes to be should on. So it creates division.
Most of us like choices, and freedom. My work is about freedom, and choices.
I also see how this legislation is changing, and more and more places are going smoke (and even tobacco)-free. I call the no smoking signs “signs of the times.” It’s just reality. It just is.
As the laws change, I think about what campuses will look like, and what will happen to all of those shelters, like the one you picture here.
I wrote a little blog on it. http://kickbuttstakenames.com/smoke-shack-baby/
No shoulds.
Thanks,
Joanna
Thank you for your insightful and meaningful post. I can understand what you’re saying, but for many of us against the ban (and some of us don’t even use tobacco), we see the ban as hypocrisy – that these institutions say that they want to make us healthier yet they still serve horribly unhealthy food, allow cars to drive around in the midst of students, and don’t enforce pedestrian/traffic laws.
We all agree that smoking and chewing is unhealthy, but there are many things that we are allowed to do that are unhealthy. You are right-it’s a choice. I choose to not smoke or chew, but yes, I do bristle at the idea of an outside entity telling me that I SHOULD NOT do something, yet continue to endorse other things that are bad.
And this is entirely separate from the issue that this is a hardship on older employees who might have been smoking for decades and find smoking as a way to relieve some of the stress from working for those very same institutions.
Please delete one of these.
Thank you for your insightful and meaningful post. I can understand what you’re saying, but for many of us against the ban (and some of us don’t even use tobacco), we see the ban as hypocrisy – that these institutions say that they want to make us healthier yet they still serve horribly unhealthy food, allow cars to drive around in the midst of students, and don’t enforce pedestrian/traffic laws.
We all agree that smoking and chewing is unhealthy, but there are many things that we are allowed to do that are unhealthy. You are right-it’s a choice. I choose to not smoke or chew, but yes, I do bristle at the idea of an outside entity telling me that I SHOULD NOT do something, yet continue to endorse other things that are bad.
And this is entirely separate from the issue that this is a hardship on older employees who might have been smoking for decades and find smoking as a way to relieve some of the stress from working for those very same institutions.
Stereotyping again. Check out the food service on campus, you might be surprised. As for the traffic, that’s necessity for any large campus. ASnd those of us who are on occasion both pedestrians and drivers on campus, we’re responsible enough to watch very carefully. Doesn’t matter if a pedestrian is in a crosswalk or not, as a driver, you stop. period.
The bans are not hypocritical, you choose to make poor risk comparisons. Smoking affects far more than just the smoker. And why should we be required to pay for your increased health care as time goes on? Oh, and for those of you who are also strict Constitutionalists as well as libertarians, where are you given the “right” to smoke?
Stereotyping again? When was the last time I stereotyped?
I am on campus very very frequently and I see what kind of food they serve to the students. Sure, they serve healthy food, but it’s expensive sometimes and, if they truly cared about the health of the students, they wouldn’t serve or sell it at all.
Traffic in the middle of campus where large numbers of students are walking between classes is not necessary. There was once a plan to make UMaine a walking campus with traffic only on the periphery. If that were to happen, then the core of the campus wouldn’t be exposed as much to the unhealthy gases from vehicular exhaust.
You’ve been on campus-you see how students will walk into the street without looking first, usually doing something with a phone. And no, I am not required to stop, crosswalk or not. The state law is that pedestrians have the right-of-way in the crosswalk only, no matter what the campus maps say. A pedestrian does not have the right of way when there is no crosswalk and it is not legal for a pedestrian to “suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into the path of a vehicle that is so close that it is impossible for the operator to yield.” Students endanger their lives every day in the streets on UM but instead of signs to warn pedestrians about that, we have signs that welcome people to the “University of Maine-the No Tobacco Campus university” at every entrance.
Okay-you pay for Veronica’s disease caused by the legal act of smoking. Are you also for laws that ban the sale of deep fried food, high-fat food, and alcohol? You are paying immensely for diseases and injury caused by such foods and beverages. This country would be a miserable place if our behavior is so over-relegated because the taxpayer and insurance holder “has to pay for it.” You can’t drive too fast, you can’t skydive, you can’t scuba dive, you can’t eat fish ‘n chips, you can’t smoke a pipe, you can’t eat donuts, you can’t do anything that might put you in any sort of danger or risk category because the phantom taxpayer will be paying for your sins. God help us!
For those 30% who don’t want to hear about not smoking, tough toods. I don’t usually call smokers out, but I will would them out if I can’t avoid the plume. That’s my choice, my freedom.
I’m a weekly visitor to the UM campus and I still see students and staff smoking as well as cigarette butts. Less than before, but still occurs.
Next they will ban sugary drinks and junk food from the campus .
Then drinking and fat people, Drug testing, cholesterol screening, DNA screening for genetic disorders and finally just line people up and shoot them. Sorry that slope’s a bit slippery.
yes thats true
But if it save just ONE dollar, it’s worth it!!!
How much money has that cost ?
That’s beside the point!
So its ok to spend 200 ,000 to save a dollar
You know I’m being silly. Haven’t you read my other comments? I think policy is paternalistic, heavy-handed, naive, and controlling. All this, from new signs that add to the sign pollution to new rules that could result in serious penalties to students and employees while marginalizing a small segment of the community is a terrible way to “modify our behavior.” WHY do people smoke? WHY is there such stress in their lives? WHY do people enjoy it? Sure, smoking and chewing is bad, but this policy goes against the mission of a university, especially one that allows alcohol and fried chicken nuggets.
But the biggest issue I have with this is that using tobacco is LEGAL. If they can enact a complete ban on this legal activity, what sort of power does that give them over us?
I was enjoying a smoke outside sitting on the tailgate of my truck at lunch at a house I was working on when a weasley limp wristed punk came walking by and he sniped ” don’t you know smoking is bad for your health ?” I replied “so is sticking your nose into other peoples business”..He whined in response “violence never solved any problem”.. Really , I replied , want to see it solve this problem as I got off my tailgate..All you could see was a cloud of dust as he took off running…LOL…I still chuckle thinking about it…LOL..
You NANNY types really need to find another hobby…Like paying attention to you own life as much as you try to mine…
Love your response! So true. (I gave up smoking 20 years ago but I believe smokers have rights too.)
There is absolutely no good reason to disallow these areas if they’re outside and away from a building. Good story.
Smoking is legal. Designate a non-flammable area, and if you don’t smoke, stay away from that area. Stop whining, nagging, nannying, annoying and bullying smokers.
Put your energy into ending violence, feeding the hungry, assisting the disabled, picking up litter, cleaning up waterways or doing SOMETHING that requires your attention and energy.
You’ll feel better about yourself and it will leave you no time to harrass people engaging in a legal habit.
Making a campus smoke free is the same thing as saying you can’t smoke and get an education too. I’m not a smoker and can’t stand running into it in a public place but designated places are a reasonable compromise between my right to “smoke-free” and a smoker’s right to smoke. I don’t see this intrusion into a personal decision as being any different than some of the restrictions on abortion, the birth-control/religious rights debate and same-sex marriage. If you don’t believe in it, don’t do it, otherwise stay out of other people’s business.
The people who tend to not want people smoking are also the people who tend to fill out surveys. I remember when they first tried to do this at UMFK in 2001. First you could not smoke in your rooms, then you had to go to a designated smoking area. Now they are trying to make the entire complexes, often where people are paying to live, smoke free. At each step, there was a promise of the most recent restriction as the ‘last step.’ As a non-smoker, I will fully fight against these punitive measures.
Sorry If i spend $40,000.00 a year or more to go college i think i can smoke a cigerette or throw in a pinch of chew whenever I want just as long as I’m in the designated spot…
Want to bet this same nanny wants to legalize marijuana.
Yes, the University of Maine is a smoke-free campus. Since being designated as such, they have removed all of the “butt collectors” that used to be outside buildings, and in other popular smoking areas. So now we just have cigarette butts all over the lawns and sidewalks all around campus. So glad we are a no-smoking campus……it used to me so much cleaner when we were not.
I’m all for smoking areas, but blaming butt litter on the policy and not the slobs that don’t field strip their smokes is wrong.
How about they put a designated standing
and entering area for non smokers?
Maybe seperate water fountains and restrooms as well.
Oh Paaaleeeese!,Damn Liberals…always trying to run other peoples lives.
This is not a liberal policy.
There SHOULD be consequences for such socially unacceptable, dangerous publick behaviors! By golly I think we should go one step farther! ANYONE that is found smoking should IMMEDIATELY have a radio bracelet attached to their ankles so that their movements can be tracked! And if they light-up their evil weed, they can be immediately ARRESTED, PROSECUTED AND IMPRISONED! And if they eat meat and drive non-electric, polluting vehicles OR (shudder) vote INDEPENDENT OR REPUBLICAN, they should have any bail revoked and allowed NO parole when sentenced for their heinous krimes against der state by the Kourt of Kangaroos in Demokratic States of Obama (may His name be blessed!)
(PS – I am a nonsmoker and have no financial interest in either the tobacco or legal industries)