Student Senate to vote on tobacco ban Friday

USM

The Student Senate will vote whether to support or oppose a proposed campus-wide tobacco ban at their weekly meeting Friday at 11 p.m. in room 431 of the Glickman Family Library in Portland.

The ban was opposed by a small majority of voters in the recent Student Government Elections, however the vote was close enough that the senate decided to discuss the issue further.

“The vote was so close that we decided there needed to be more discussion,” said Brendan Morse, chair of the Student Senate’s student affairs committee.

The Student Senate has drafted two resolutions to vote on Friday, one support a tobacco ban and the other opposing it. Morse said the resolution chosen will be presented to university administrators as the official position of the Senate.

The proposal for a tobacco ban came from the USM tobacco policy committee, which is led by USM’s health promotion manager Suzanne Roy. Roy said the decision to look into a ban on all tobacco products—even smokeless tobacco—was due in part to the University of Maine’s recent tobacco ban, which took effect January 1st.

UMaine’s tobacco policy is currently voluntary, although an official tobacco ban will take effect January 1st, 2012.

According to Roy, 378 colleges and universities currently have tobacco-free campuses. “We’re trying to follow the trend, just like with sustainability,” she said.

 

 

 

Comments

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I guess all “small majorities” that run against the policies of the Tobacco Policy Committee are a call to arms to have a revote. Despte the millions of dollars spent annually by the ALA, ACS, AHA, CDC, and WHO to educate people to believe that secondhand smoke in the outdoor air is killing them, the Tobacco Policy Committee still believes that whoever voted before on this issue was uneducated on the subject.

    The reason clinical trials for drugs use a control group that gets a placebo is because there are typically 2-3% of the population who get better on the placebo just because they believe they are being treated. Conversely, if someone spends millions of dollars annually telling you and your elected representatives that secondhand smoke outdoors, in ambient air, is killing you, then a certain percentage of the population will get sick just seeing someone smoke because they subconsciously believe it.

    The power of “education” is amazing–millions of Germans were made to feel sick and their survival threatened whenever they saw an ambient Jew. And the reason it was necessary to have Jews wear identifying armbands was so that Germans who saw them would know that they were experiencing an instance where they should expect to feel sick and threatened. Little wonder that they DID feel sick and threatened whenever the continued presence of a Jew was brought to their attention. Ghettoizing Jews was a good thing because it protected the people deserving of protection from toxic Jewry. This was exactly why the German people needed the increasing involvement of government to protect them.

    I assume USM already has tobacco policies, or they wouldn’t have a Tobacco Policy Committee. Go home. foks! You’ve already done your job. Help the people who ask for your help without persecuting the people who don’t want it.

    Here’s Mayor Randy Voepel’s response to the American Lung Association when they demanded similar draconian measures be instituted in Santee, CA. I couldn’t say it any better:

    http://santee.patch.com/articles/santee-mayor-explains-citys-f-for-freedom-tobacco-grade

    Reply
  2. bob Avatar
    bob

    It seems to me that a ban on tobacco products would be unfair to the persons that use them. If I choose to smoke a cigarette outdoors, away from the entrance of a building but you decide to walk directly in the path that I am standing and smoke goes into your face that’s somehow my fault? I should have my right to the same freedoms as you taken away? when you could have just as easily stepped five feet to the right and avoided me.

    Reply
  3. Will Gloves Avatar
    Will Gloves

    Hmm, what an interesting development. The reasoning for the Ban of smoking or Tobacco products on campus seem to be nothing to do with public health beyond the insipid gesture is keeping up with the Image of surrounding Colleges and the general complaining of those that work and the aesthetic nature of campus. Well, I will give no sympathy or even a moments thought to those who say ‘following the trend of colleges’ as Roy does as being a valid reason. However, the concern for USM’s campus becoming polluted with the remnants of tobacco use has validity. Well, easy solution, more butt-cans or fining people that just sight-unseen cast their remnants to the ground. Problem solved (as it ever will be).
    Also, on the health note, if these individuals are complaining about the “second-hand smoke” issue. Ban all combustion engines on campus and move it out of the city, because, low and behold, we are in a city. We are surrounded by emissions of Cars, Buses and Industrial vehicles. Or, if these individuals are truly worried about our own concern, why don’t these individuals require a vigorous work out regime for all students and not allow them to graduate before a certain level of dictated fitness is reached? Alone, we can see the absurdity in these statements, but our generation has the problem of being able to pull back enough to notice these meaningless gestures.
    Allow me to end this with the wisdom of my major, and I shall cite the moral thesis of John Stuart Mill, “My right to swing my fist ends at the nose that it connects with.” People will always be offended by cigarette smoking, but they will not be harmed beyond it anymore than the smog of the city, or their own dietary choices. I see this ban now, as nothing more than the product of villianizing people that do not follow the same life choices as others. Smokers smoke outdoors, they smoke on windy campuses. They always will smoke, and speaking just for my self, this has no sway in making me quit.
    If USM has truly the modicum of free thought that it espouses, this will be dismissed as being what it is, a meaningless gesture to make us seem more proactive and attract the more ‘healthy-living’ students and parents that have big accounts, and will pay the tuition our school so badly needs.

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