It is common knowledge that people smoke cigarettes behind the bushes outside of the back end of Bowden Hall. Since Emory has a tobacco ban, it does not provide these smokers with the proper means of disposing of their cigarette butts. Thus they litter, much to the chagrin of Emory’s maintenance staff, who has to clean the mess up.
Last week, the maintenance staff came up with a practical way to alleviate this littering issue. They placed white buckets quarter-filled with sand throughout the area to serve as ashtrays. Within a single day, the amount of littered cigarette butts became virtually nil. But by Monday, the ashtrays were gone, and the littering is once again rampant.
Emory prides itself on being a 100 percent tobacco-free institution. But perhaps this pride ought to be reevaluated. Many tobacco users, primarily cigarette smokers, exercise their habit on campus every day with unabashed determination. Case in point: at the beginning of the fall semester, a sign was placed at the Bowden Hall smoking area to ward off potential smokers. It was immediately thrown into a nearby creek, where it stayed for two weeks to the amusement of those who passed by. Later, it was placed back in its original spot, where it remains untouched, apparently out of an unspoken respect among smokers for whoever was forced to retrieve it. The sign warns that the area is being monitored and that repeat offenders will face disciplinary action.
It is unlikely that repeat offenders will be issued anything like a citation, however, because the tobacco ban is “community-enforced,” as stated on the Emory website. This means that it is up to the Emory community as a whole – not the police – to enforce the policy. The utter ease with which one can get away lighting up a cigarette behind Bowden Hall indicates an overwhelming sense of apathy towards the issue on the community’s part. Perhaps this apathy stems from the fact that we as a community never actually agreed to carry the responsibility of enforcing a tobacco ban.
Another reason for the community’s indifference towards the policy could be that we realize what the administration doesn’t: that a blanket ban on smoking is as senseless as the very act of smoking itself. Most smokers know what they are doing to their bodies, yet they smoke nonetheless. If the prospect of detriments to their health, up to and including death, is not enough to stop them, then there really is not much else anybody can expect to do about it. Likewise, the self-destructive nature of smoking was emulated by the administration this week with the removal of those ashtrays. In doing so, the administration did nothing to support its anti-smoking policy. Instead, it undermined an effort by its own employees to mitigate the littering of cigarette butts.
Fighting poor logic with equally poor logic was not the initial tactic employed by the administration. At the start of the ban, there were 14 designated temporary smoking zones where smoking was permitted in order to facilitate the transition to a tobacco-free campus. Such spots kept people from smoking on the go and made the practice much less visible to the public eye. Now these zones are gone, and what remains is a situation where smokers, fully aware of the tobacco ban, have created their own smoking areas around campus.
If the administration has a problem with this situation, it could do one of several options. The first option would be to make a serious effort to raise awareness of the community’s responsibility in enforcing the ban. One easy way to do this would be to actually update tobaccofree.emory.edu at least semi-regularly.
The severely neglected website contains outdated sample scripts designed to “train” students, faculty and staff on Emory’s tobacco-free policy. One such script reads: “Hello, my name is _______, and I am an (employee, student) here at Emory. I want to make you aware that we are now a tobacco-free campus … meaning that tobacco products are prohibited on our grounds. This new policy went into effect on January 1 [2012]. Thank you for your cooperation.”
Another option would be for Emory to hire others to do their dirty work. Aluminum-bat-wielding patrol squads would be an effective deterrent against public smoking. Just a joke, though it would sure convince me to take my habit elsewhere. An even more effective deterrent might be for Emory to pay smokers to participate in cessation programs. Such an altruistic use of Emory’s funds would surely be lauded by the observing world.
The point is not exactly that Emory should enforce its tobacco ban more rigorously, but as long as Emory remains unwilling to crack down on the persistent use of tobacco products on its “tobacco-free” campus, the small jabs like taking away our ashtrays must cease. Such passive-aggressive behavior is unworthy of the 21st-best college in the nation.
By Erik Alexander
Erik Alexander is a College senior majoring in economics.
First the ban is based upon BS junk science claiming harn that never existed.
Put simply its a bunch of Prohibitionists pushing this ban mentality everywhere.
This pretty well destroys the Myth of second hand smoke:
Lungs from pack-a-day smokers safe for transplant, study finds.
By JoNel Aleccia, Staff Writer, NBC News.
Using lung transplants from heavy smokers may sound like a cruel joke, but a new study finds that organs taken from people who puffed a pack a day for more than 20 years are likely safe.
What’s more, the analysis of lung transplant data from the U.S. between 2005 and 2011 confirms what transplant experts say they already know: For some patients on a crowded organ waiting list, lungs from smokers are better than none.
“I think people are grateful just to have a shot at getting lungs,” said Dr. Sharven Taghavi, a cardiovascular surgical resident at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, who led the new study………………………
Ive done the math here and this is how it works out with second ahnd smoke and people inhaling it!
The 16 cities study conducted by the U.S. DEPT OF ENERGY and later by Oakridge National laboratories discovered:
Cigarette smoke, bartenders annual exposure to smoke rises, at most, to the equivalent of 6 cigarettes/year.
146,000 CIGARETTES SMOKED IN 20 YEARS AT 1 PACK A DAY.
A bartender would have to work in second hand smoke for 2433 years to get an equivalent dose.
Then the average non-smoker in a ventilated restaurant for an hour would have to go back and forth each day for 119,000 years to get an equivalent 20 years of smoking a pack a day! Pretty well impossible ehh!
This pretty well destroys the Myth of second hand smoke:
http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/28/16741714-lungs-from-pack-a-day-smokers-safe-for-transplant-study-finds?lite
Lungs from pack-a-day smokers safe for transplant, study finds.
By JoNel Aleccia, Staff Writer, NBC News.
Using lung transplants from heavy smokers may sound like a cruel joke, but a new study finds that organs taken from people who puffed a pack a day for more than 20 years are likely safe.
What’s more, the analysis of lung transplant data from the U.S. between 2005 and 2011 confirms what transplant experts say they already know: For some patients on a crowded organ waiting list, lungs from smokers are better than none.
“I think people are grateful just to have a shot at getting lungs,” said Dr. Sharven Taghavi, a cardiovascular surgical resident at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, who led the new study………………………
Ive done the math here and this is how it works out with second ahnd smoke and people inhaling it!
The 16 cities study conducted by the U.S. DEPT OF ENERGY and later by Oakridge National laboratories discovered:
Cigarette smoke, bartenders annual exposure to smoke rises, at most, to the equivalent of 6 cigarettes/year.
146,000 CIGARETTES SMOKED IN 20 YEARS AT 1 PACK A DAY.
A bartender would have to work in second hand smoke for 2433 years to get an equivalent dose.
Then the average non-smoker in a ventilated restaurant for an hour would have to go back and forth each day for 119,000 years to get an equivalent 20 years of smoking a pack a day! Pretty well impossible ehh!
OSHA also took on the passive smoking fraud and this is what came of it:
Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence: Third Edition
This sorta says it all
These limits generally are based on assessments of health risk and calculations of concentrations that are associated with what the regulators believe to be negligibly small risks. The calculations are made after first identifying the total dose of a chemical that is safe (poses a negligible risk) and then determining the concentration of that chemical in the medium of concern that should not be exceeded if exposed individuals (typically those at the high end of media contact) are not to incur a dose greater than the safe one.
So OSHA standards are what is the guideline for what is acceptable ”SAFE LEVELS”
OSHA SAFE LEVELS
All this is in a small sealed room 9×20 and must occur in ONE HOUR.
For Benzo[a]pyrene, 222,000 cigarettes.
“For Acetone, 118,000 cigarettes.
“Toluene would require 50,000 packs of simultaneously smoldering cigarettes.
Acetaldehyde or Hydrazine, more than 14,000 smokers would need to light up.
“For Hydroquinone, “only” 1250 cigarettes.
For arsenic 2 million 500,000 smokers at one time.
The same number of cigarettes required for the other so called chemicals in shs/ets will have the same outcomes.
So, OSHA finally makes a statement on shs/ets :
Field studies of environmental tobacco smoke indicate that under normal conditions, the components in tobacco smoke are diluted below existing Permissible Exposure Levels (PELS.) as referenced in the Air Contaminant Standard (29 CFR 1910.1000)…It would be very rare to find a workplace with so much smoking that any individual PEL would be exceeded.” -Letter From Greg Watchman, Acting Sec’y, OSHA.
Why are their any smoking bans at all they have absolutely no validity to the courts or to science!
US Bureau of Labor Statistics Shows Zero Deaths From 2nd Hand Smoke
Where are the deaths?
If people who work in bars die from secondhand smoke, why does the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the last 4 years show ZERO DEATHS from exposure to harmful substances or environments?
This data is for 2011. (pg38 of 53). Notice that 31 people died while working in a “drinking place”(which my bar is classified as). 27 deaths were by violent injuries by persons or animals(?). 2 died by fires or explosions. I don’t know where the other 2 deaths are listed however, there are 0 deaths from exposure to harmful substances or environments.
So where are these deaths from SHS?
Notice 2010 under this below. In 2010, there were 28 total deaths, 25 from violence and 0 from exposure to harmful substances or environments.
0250.pdf (pg 18).
In 2009, 32 deaths of bar workers. 31 were violent deaths and 0 from exposure to harmful substances or environments.
(pg 18)
In 2008, 35 deaths of bar workers. 32 were violent deaths and 0 from exposure to harmful substances or environments.
(pg 18).
They aren’t crawling out and dying in the parking lots either. We would have noticed ’em.”
Sheila Martin