Suzanne Roy is the health promotion manager at USM, and she heads the Tobacco Policy Committee that is now advocating for a campus-wide ban on all forms of tobacco — even those that don’t burdan passersby with second-hand smoke. She sat down with The Free Press to discuss that, as well as why she’s ruled out designated smoking areas and why USM smokers shouldn’t stake out a corner of nearby sidewalk just yet.
Have you ever been a smoker?
I was a smoker years ago. I know how hard it is to quit. It took me almost two years before I finally was able to give up smoking altogether, and get the conviction that I’d never do it again.
Do you think the policy with designated smoking areas was just doomed to fail, or might it have been better executed?
I know that everywhere they have isolated smoking sections, it’s doomed to fail. People get relaxed about a policy. At first, people see the markers and try to adhere. Especially in an environment like USM, where there are so many new people coming in all the time, you have people who aren’t aware. And we’ve provided signage; we’ve refurbished some of the designated areas to have receptacles. I even made up cards to hand out, which show where to find the smoking areas, and then there is information about quitting on the back.
But you are now lobbying for the full-on ban. You’re not willing to give designated areas another shot?
Well, they just haven’t worked. That’s what all the evidence has shown, when we had a consultant come in — the district tobacco consultant for Cumberland County. The evidence has shown that it’s just very confusing to people if you say on one hand that smoking is harmful to your health and will cause you to die, then provide areas to do it and receptacles to put cigarettes out in. Are we just going to say we’re concerned about the health of non-smokers only, or do we care about that of smokers? It just sends a mixed message, and says you’re condoning smoking.
A lot of smokers have complained that the current system is poorly advertised, that the allowed areas disappear, and the remaining ones can be buried in snow throughout winter.
That’s true. If they can’t get to the receptacle to put out their butts, they’re not going to smoke there. So that could have been done better. As for the ones that changed, I had talked to facilities management about the placement of some areas, which were on a path that everybody has to walk right by. So they removed those.
Doesn’t it seem to work better in Gorham?
Well, they’ve been going up on the hill, which has become a quasi-designated smoking area. But there are still a lot of students who smoke near the residential halls, and that affects the non-smokers quite a bit. We’ve gotten emails from students with allergies and asthma who have been having trouble breathing. And they’ve said, if you have this policy, why is it not enforced?
The ban isn’t just an idea that occurred to us; it’s actually a trend throughout the state and the country. At the colleges we’re hearing from that are completely tobacco free, over time there is more compliance. There’s a huge sign right at the entrance of UMO’s campus that says “We are a tobacco free campus.”
When you say tobacco bans, that of course includes smokeless tobaccos.
Well, that concerns chewing tobacco, and we haven’t talked about the [electronic] cigarette, but that’s got nicotine. I don’t know enough about it to speak on it.
What is the reason for chewing tobacco to fall under a ban?
Well, we’ve been told that facilities management spends a lot of time cleaning up spittle in doors, entryways, stairwells, shower rooms. There are bottles of it left out — it’s all very gross, obviously. That’s how it affects others.
But this is less extreme than second-hand smoke.
Yes, as far as affecting other people, it doesn’t affect my health.
Shouldn’t they be separate issues?
I don’t know how to answer that. When we’re looking at tobacco products, these are things that all cause cancer.
The spitting is gross to look at, but that’s where the policy gets more involved in an individual’s personal health. Couldn’t that translate to a lot of other things?
No, I don’t see it going in that direction. People always bring that up, that next it will be sugar or whatever, but I think it’s hard to impose certain — I mean, with any policy, is it not that the administration is looking for ‘best outcomes’? Whether it’s decisions they’re making for students in the academic realm or elsewhere. We’re trying to do the best we can to provide the best of services and keep people in a safe environment.
Are you advocating for a specific enforcement technique, like a fine?
I think that’s something that President [Selma Botman] and the administration would have to decide. There do have to be some incentives; there was a time when I kept forgetting to shut my windows on my way out, and I was eventually warned that if I didn’t get better about it, there could be consequences. That’s reasonable. If there aren’t any consequences, people might just do whatever they want.
Won’t many smokers just take their cigarettes and their second-hand smoke out to the public sidewalks nearby?
They certainly might, but we will deal with that. Some people at Oakhurst — since those grounds became smoke-free — have started coming over here to have a cigarette. There is a hospital nearby that has a smoke-free policy, and they’ve been telling their staff members that they want to incorporate streets around the property into that ban, because they don’t want to have it negatively affect residents nearby. So it will probably be written in our own policy to include streets bordering USM property.
It’s not a done deal; there are many issues we need to look at, including what we plan to provide smokers in terms of resources. We need to hear more from the students. We did a quick one day poll asking if people would be willing to sign on to ban, and in a day we had 250 signatures. There is a constituency. But of equal importance is our plan in terms of enforcement, and to accomodate people who do smoke.
Should they get their hopes up for a rooftop smoking section?
Ah — in a dream world.
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get a life
learn to spell while you’re at it.
Remember prohibition? If we ban smoking totally it’ll just create an underground economy for thugs to sell their commodity. Curiosity killed a cat any young people who are told smoking it bad will raise more curiosity! Am ex-smoker and I think designated area is way to go. Total band just creates unnecessary social devIants which leads to social unrest sociology 101.
The ‘key’ to this whole situation is to educate..not legislate.
http://fightingback.homestead.com
THE AIR ACCORDING TO OSHA
Though repetition has little to do with “the truth,” we’re repeatedly told that there’s “no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke.”
OSHA begs to differ.
OSHA has established PELs (Permissible Exposure Levels) for all the measurable chemicals, including the 40 alleged carcinogens, in secondhand smoke. PELs are levels of exposure for an 8-hour workday from which, according to OSHA, no harm will result.
Of course the idea of “thousands of chemicals” can itself sound spooky. Perhaps it would help to note that coffee contains over 1000 chemicals, 19 of which are known to be rat carcinogens.
-“Rodent Carcinogens: Setting Priorities” Gold Et Al., Science, 258: 261-65 (1992)
There. Feel better?
As for secondhand smoke in the air, OSHA has stated outright that:
“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, To Leroy J Pletten, PHD, July 8, 1997
Indeed it would.
Independent health researchers have done the chemistry and the math to prove how very very rare that would be.
As you’re about to see in a moment.
In 1999, comments were solicited by the government from an independent Public and Health Policy Research group, Littlewood & Fennel of Austin, Tx, on the subject of secondhand smoke.
Using EPA figures on the emissions per cigarette of everything measurable in secondhand smoke, they compared them to OSHA’s PELs.
The following excerpt and chart are directly from their report and their Washington testimony:
CALCULATING THE NON-EXISTENT RISKS OF ETS
“We have taken the substances for which measurements have actually been obtained–very few, of course, because it’s difficult to even find these chemicals in diffuse and diluted ETS.
“We posit a sealed, unventilated enclosure that is 20 feet square with a 9 foot ceiling clearance.
“Taking the figures for ETS yields per cigarette directly from the EPA, we calculated the number of cigarettes that would be required to reach the lowest published “danger” threshold for each of these substances. The results are actually quite amusing. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a situation where these threshold limits could be realized.
“Our chart (Table 1) illustrates each of these substances, but let me report some notable examples.
“For Benzo[a]pyrene, 222,000 cigarettes would be required to reach the lowest published “danger” threshold.
“For Acetone, 118,000 cigarettes would be required.
“Toluene would require 50,000 packs of simultaneously smoldering cigarettes.
“At the lower end of the scale– in the case of Acetaldehyde or Hydrazine, more than 14,000 smokers would need to light up simultaneously in our little room to reach the threshold at which they might begin to pose a danger.
“For Hydroquinone, “only” 1250 cigarettes are required. Perhaps we could post a notice limiting this 20-foot square room to 300 rather tightly-packed people smoking no more than 62 packs per hour?
“Of course the moment we introduce real world factors to the room — a door, an open window or two, or a healthy level of mechanical air exchange (remember, the room we’ve been talking about is sealed) achieving these levels becomes even more implausible.
“It becomes increasingly clear to us that ETS is a political, rather than scientific, scapegoat.”
Chart (Table 1)
-“Toxic Toxicology” Littlewood & Fennel
Coming at OSHA from quite a different angle is litigator (and how!) John Banzhaf, founder and president of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH).
Banzhaf is on record as wanting to remove healthy children from intact homes if one of their family smokes. He also favors national smoking bans both indoors and out throughout America, and has litigation kits for sale on how to get your landlord to evict your smoking neighbors.
Banzhaf originally wanted OSHA to ban smoking in all American workplaces.
It’s not even that OSHA wasn’t happy to play along; it’s just that–darn it — they couldn’t find the real-world science to make it credible.
So Banzhaf sued them. Suing federal agencies to get them to do what you want is, alas, a new trick in the political deck of cards. But OSHA, at least apparently, hung tough.
In response to Banzhaf’s law suit they said the best they could do would be to set some official standards for permissible levels of smoking in the workplace.
Scaring Banzhaf, and Glantz and the rest of them to death.
Permissible levels? No, no. That would mean that OSHA, officially, said that smoking was permitted. That in fact, there were levels (hard to exceed, as we hope we’ve already shown) that were generally safe.
This so frightened Banzhaf that he dropped the case. Here are excerpts from his press release:
“ASH has agreed to dismiss its lawsuit against OSHA…to avoid serious harm to the non-smokers rights movement from adverse action OSHA had threatened to take if forced by the suit to do it….developing some hypothetical [ASH’s characterization] measurement of smoke pollution that might be a better remedy than prohibiting smoking….[T]his could seriously hurt efforts to pass non-smokers’ rights legislation at the state and local level…
Another major threat was that, if the agency were forced by ASH’s suit to promulgate a rule regulating workplace smoking, [it] would be likely to pass a weak one…. This weak rule in turn could preempt future and possibly even existing non-smokers rights laws– a risk no one was willing to take.
As a result of ASH’s dismissal of the suit, OSHA will now withdraw its rule-making proceedings but will do so without using any of the damaging [to Anti activists] language they had threatened to include.”
-ASH Nixes OSHA Suit To Prevent Harm To Movement
Looking on the bright side, Banzhaf concludes:
“We might now be even more successful in persuading states and localities to ban smoking on their own, once they no longer have OSHA rule-making to hide behind.”
Once again, the Anti-Smoking Movement reveals that it’s true motive is basically Prohibition (stopping smokers from smoking; making them “social outcasts”) –not “safe air.”
And the attitude seems to be, as Stanton Glantz says, if the science doesn’t “help” you, don’t do the science.
She doesn’t know about nicotine? Another “expert” is needed.
If nicotine is harmful, as some suggest or say, one must ask why it’s approved in patented gums, patches, tablets, inhalers etc….but then said to be dangerous in chewing tobacco or smokable tobacco, or as additive in fake tobacco smoking products. Science and law can’t be arbitrary.
Tobacco, itself, apparently has not yet been studied to provide justification for any health-related bans? True. NO research has been clear if it’s about Plain Tobacco, Fake Tobacco, or Typical Pesticide-Contaminted, Dioxin-Delivering, Radiation-Contaminated, Multi-Ingredient smoking products. We do not know what they “researched”. How can law be based on that?
“Cigarettes” (made of god-knows-what) have been “studied”, but that isn’t necessarily about tobacco. According to the US Patent office, that could be corncobs, paper, wood chips, or even peanut shells disguised to seem like tobacco. One must test for more than just nicotine because, in many (if not most) smoking products, nicotine extract is just an additive, not inherent to the smoking material.
Google up “Fauxbacco” for references to the above…and more.
The answer to the last question gets me. “Ah- in a dream world.” What a nice attitude you have Suzanne. See, if the smoking areas were well designed they’d be used more often. Entrances to buildings have overhangs for the rain and snow. No person wants to stand in the rain or snow. If there were smoking areas with an overhead, people would be more inclined to smoke there. Also, having it be a larger object would make it noticeable. The smoking areas around Portland and Gorham aren’t exactly prominent.
I understand why a hospital would not want smoking around their buildings, but I see USM’s want for this ban as a way to get back at smokers and dippers for leaving their butts and spit around. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
“Maine has the nation’s highest tobacco addiction rate for young adults (ages 18-30) and among the highest in the nation for youth tobacco addiction rates (ages 14-18).” Making USM a tobacco-free campus is sure to make people think twice about applying here.