The official date for banning tobacco across UK’s campus is nine months away but figuring out how the plan will be implemented has begun.
On Monday, UK announced the members of the Tobacco-Free Initiative along with a Nov. 19 target date for officially having the plan in place.
How the ban will be enforced — including how smokers will be punished and whether ashtrays will be removed — will develop over the next few months through subcommittees within the Tobacco-Free Initiative Task Force, said Jimmy Stanton, UK spokesman.
Saul Wright, a history senior, said the policy would be hard to enforce and suggested a way to avoid being caught smoking on campus.
“I probably would still go (smoke) somewhere down in the trees if I really wanted to,†Wright said.
Stanton also said the smoking ban on the UK Medical Center has been a success and will be used as a model for the rest of the campus.
Associate Vice President for Health Affairs Murray Clark said in the few encounters he has had with patients and visitors smoking on hospital property, he has simply explained the new policy and they willingly moved, according to a December Kernel article.
Clark said if an employee refused to move or continually smoked inside the property lines of the hospital, that situation would be managed like any other violation of hospital policy.
Cassie Criscillis, an elementary education sophomore, said the ban would cause her to cut back on her smoking.
“It’s just too hard as a smoker,†Criscillis said. “I’m going to have to cut back.â€
President Lee Todd said in a campus-wide e-mail that this ban would improve the campus atmosphere.
Non-smoker Ashley Brown, a pre-nursing freshman, said it will be nice not to see smoke on campus.
“I don’t like how people walk around and casually blow smoke in my face.†Brown said. “I’m allergic to cigarette smoke so it will help me.â€
Rex Stidham, a teaching and academic support staff member who does not smoke, isn’t bothered by the ban but doesn’t know how appropriate it is in Kentucky.
“Since I don’t smoke, I can’t say that I mind it,†Stidham said. “It doesn’t seem fair to me for a state that relies on (tobacco). With the tobacco industry, it’s not uncommon to have a lot of smokers in the state.â€
Already knowing some students will question the ban, Criscillis compared it to when UK cut back the hours of the W.T. Young Library. She cited students being angry and rallying an effort to change the hours but she doesn’t believe students have the power to change this.
“I think it’s going to anger a lot of people and cause a lot of controversy,†Criscillis said. “I don’t think there is a legitimate enough reason (to overturn the ban).â€
While the committee works on ways to implement the smoking ban, for some, the questions, concerns and frustrations will remain. Anthropology freshman Ariel Gold-McCoy summed up her frustration in a short statement.
“It pisses me off,†Gold-McCoy said.
Every smoking ban, everywhere, has been rammed down the public’s throat by falsely framing the issue as “freedom versus public health,” and CONCEALING ANTI-SMOKER SCIENTIFIC FRAUD.
More than 50 studies have implicated human papillomaviruses as the cause of over 22% of non-small cell lung cancers. This would equal over 30,000 cases, which is more than they are claiming for radon. It’s also ten times more lung cancers than the anti-smokers pretend are caused by secondhand smoke. Passive smokers are more likely to have been exposed to this virus, so the anti-smokers’ studies, because they are all based on nothing but lifestyle questionnaires, have been cynically DESIGNED to falsely blame passive smoking for all those extra lung cancers that are really caused by HPV. And, it’s obvious that a significant proportion of lung cancers blamed on active smoking are actually caused by HPV. Obviously, there is a corrupt, politically-motivated coverup of a far larger cause of lung cancer than radon or secondhand smoke!
http://www.smokershistory.com/hpvlungc.htm
The anti-smokers lie that smoking bans supposedly cause “immediate, dramatic” declines in the number of heart attack admissions. In the Pueblo study, what they didn’t tell you is that the death rates from acute myocardial infarction actually increased in the year after the ban, the same time they were boasting that the number of admissions declined! That suggests that people were dying because they weren’t admitted to hospitals when they should have been! And in the Indiana study, they exploited an anomalous spike in acute MIs during the “before” section of the study, to make the “after” part look better! And in the Helena study, the actual death rates from acute myocardial infarction (as opposed to hospital admissions which were the endpoint of the study) were nearly identical in 2001 (before the ban) and 2002 (the year of the ban), and reached their lowest point in 2003, the year after the smoking ban was repealed.
http://www.smokershistory.com/etsheart.html
If smoking or passive smoking were the real cause of asthma, the rates of asthma would have gone DOWN. But the EPA’s own report says, “Between 1980 and 1995, the percentage of children with asthma doubled, from 3.6 percent in 1980 to 7.5 percent in 1995.” The graph on pdf page 65 boasts of declines in cotinine levels during this same period.
http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epa/eermfile.nsf/vwAN/EE-0438A-01.pdf/$file/EE-0438A-01.pdf
And the CDC says, “Despite the plateau in asthma prevalence, ambulatory care use has continued to grow since 2000… Increased ambulatory care use for asthma has continued during an era when overall rate of ambulatory care use for children did not increase.”
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/ad/ad381.pdf
This is a classic example of how the slimy and unscrupulous manipulators of public opinion have railroaded Americans into tyranny!
I think UK police should patrol the campus in their Hemi-powered cruisers and put the leaches on any non-compliant smokers.
There are going to be some physical altercations for sure. I will be interested in who comes out on top…………..the smoker or the smokie! lol,lol,lol!!!!!
Pardon the pun, but I think all the noise about UK going smoke free will quickly blow over. Smokers who are unwilling to quit their nasty, expensive, personal and public health endangering addiction will soon learn to deal with the ban just as students who drink alcohol had to learn to deal with that ban. When was the last time you heard about protests over UK’s no alcohol ban?
I feel extremely discriminated against as a smoker, and I don’t believe this is fair at all. It isn’t going to solve any problems, people will still smoke. If after a test I feel I need a cig, I’ll smoke one. Maybe I’ll start smoking indoors. How’s that for non-compliant.
Also if you go outside you are at a health risk. You can’t control everything. Suck it up.
Boo hoo, Ariel.
B,
Have you ever been to a home football game? No one complains about the alcohol ban because it’s not enforced.
Carol, you go girl! This BS is so far out of hand that I can’t believe it. Cigarette smoke is so minute when compared to all other forms of air pollution that it is laughable. However since the Clintons strongarmed the tobacco companies back in the 90′s it has become the fashionable bandwagon to hop on. The pendulum will swing back to our side one day, it always does.
If you are going to pull information to support your argument CarolT, I would acutally looking at a legitimate source. Smokershistory.com is not a legitimate source to base an opinion off of, and I am wary of pulling information off a website that states it is “proudly dedicated to the bloody annihilation of the United States government.”. If you would like to learn reliable information on smoking, go to an actual unbiased source, one that is not supported by Phillip Morris, or at least read the news.