Decaying leaves and cigarette butts carpet the ground next to a smoking receptacle behind Luther Bonney Hall. But next week prepare to see that smoking receptacle moved to a new “designated smoking area.”
The University has created twenty new smoking areas, eleven in Gorham and nine in Portland. The new areas will have a bench or picnic table marked in yellow, a yellow smoking receptacle and a new “designated smoking area” decal.
These changes are part of a new “Life is Fair” campaign, an attempt to appease both smokers and non-smokers while satisfying the goals of the USM Tobacco/Smoking Policy. The creation of new smoking areas is a revision of the “fifty feet” policy, which stated you must be at least fifty feet away from any university building while smoking.
Pamela Clay-Storm, a nurse at University Health Services and a member of the committee responsible for changing the smoking policy in 2002, said, ” our goal [was] not to oust people who smoke.” Instead Clay-Storm said, “we tried to be conscious of being respectful to people who do and do not smoke. We tried to be fair.”
Jane Coolidge, Director of University Health Services, said, “In fairness to smokers, we created a spot where they can go to feel comfortable and have their needs met.” Coolidge said after some assessment on campus UHS discovered “a lot [of smokers] walk out of a building and light up and walk to their car or their next class. Everyone they walk by has to deal with that smoke.”
The new smoking areas allow non-smokers to move between buildings without having to worry about secondhand smoke. Coolidge said, “We tried to find areas convenient for people [who want to smoke] but allow others to avoid them”
As for enforcement, Coolidge said, “People are not going to get ticketed.” She encourages smokers to “comply out of courtesy for others.”
Clay-Storm reiterates this statement, “We don’t want to be seen as the ‘police’.” She said the new policy is an attempt to “start to contain where people were smoking…try to move them away from doors and windows.” She also said, “[University Health Services] are here to help people interested in quitting.”
When asked about the new policy, Elisabeth Janes, a 23-year-old smoker and Art major, said, “I think it’s fascist. I think that [the new designated areas] are out of bounds.” She added, “They shouldn’t make people stand out in the rain. I think it’s ironic their whole campaign is ‘life is fair.'”
Christopher Reiling, a 23-year-old science major, seems to like the idea of new smoking areas, “I think 50 feet wasn’t enough and isn’t adhered to very well.”
Reiling, who sometimes parks his bike behind Luther Bonney Hall, where many people smoke, adds, “I’m not against smoking, I smoke socially.” But, he said, “[the smoking] consciously annoys me. It’s everybody’s air.”