Council concerned for smokers’ safety

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By Brooke McCloud

One of the main complaints of the tobacco ban is that smokers are not able to smoke on campus. But what about their safety?

The safety of smokers, and how often and where they will go to smoke, was brought to special attention at Wednesday’s Town and Gown Commission meeting.

“I have received tons of e-mails,” 3rd District councilwoman Diane Lawless said. “Surprisingly, none of them have been about smoking rights. Anti-smokers are concerned about the safety issues about the pedestrians running across the street during their 15 minute breaks.”

Neighborhood representative Robert Kelly said it would take a city-wide ban to move UK’s ban to sidewalks.

“The only thing that would solve this problem is to make it uniform and ban public smoking on the sidewalks in the entire city,” Kelly said.

Anthany Beatty, vice president for public safety, said while the university administration is concerned about students crossing busy streets to smoke, he does not see it being a major problem.

“We don’t envision this large mass of people congregating to smoke together, the whole purpose of this smoking ban is to talk about treatment and turn people away from the use of tobacco products,” Beatty said.