With our campus being the size that it is, it seems impossible to catch every single student or faculty member violating the recently installed smoking ban.
And while a task force has been established at Fresno State to keep students accountable, there don’t seem to be any consequences for the offense of smoking on campus.
So what are student smokers to do? How do they kick the habit — at least while on campus?
While smoking was previously limited to over two-dozen designated areas throughout campus, students are now forced to quit smoking on campus cold-turkey — and they are challenged to hold each other accountable.
With the California State University-wide smoking ban, a task force on campus led by Vice President of Administration Deborah Adishian-Astone seeks to bring awareness to students on campus who smoke and are directly affected by the new policy.
Students and members of Fresno State’s community are being asked to hold each other accountable. The task force is offering the option to report noncompliance. The goal of reporting noncompliance is likely to observe trends in smoking in banned areas, including the Save Mart Center and Bulldog Stadium.
However, while the CSU system has attempted to place a smoking ban on campuses for years, there seems to be little preparation for a policy change that affects a large population of students.
Quitting any bad habit is a tall order — especially one as addictive as using tobacco.
Is it practical of Fresno State and the CSU system, in general, to ban any and all smoking for the student population? A slow phase-out of smoking on campus with increasingly fewer outdoor smoking areas seems like the better way to go.
While the ban is anything but convenient for tobacco using students on campus, there are resources that can help in this transition.
The Student Health and Counseling Center offers services that include nicotine patches and gum, as well as counseling services that may help students quit smoking entirely.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 13 percent of people aged 18 to 24 were reported to be smokers. The National College Health Assessment (NCHA), a study performed every year, showed the number of student smokers on campus was just over 4 percent.
While 4 percent seems like a small number, it sounds like a good portion of students on campus who are affected by this ban.
The task force is integral to the success of the “Clear the Air” campaign, student cooperation is the key to its success.
Vinny Gracchus • Sep 18, 2017 at 4:49 pm
Repeal smoking bans. Even tobacco control activists acknowledge that outdoor bans are designed to denormalize smoking and not about risks from second hand smoke. As a reminder see: Bayer, R. and Bachynski KE, “Banning Smoking In Parks And On Beaches: Science, Policy, And The Politics Of Denormalization,” Health Aff, July 2013 Vol. 32, no. 7, 1291-1298.
Consider the majority of studies discount the risks from second hand smoke under normal conditions. For example:
“ETS exposure was not found to significantly increase risk among never smokers in this study” and “It is now clear that the molecular pathogenesis of lung cancer in smokers and non-smokers is different.” Darren R Brenner, Rayjean J Hung, Ming-Sound Tsao, Frances A Shepherd, Michael R Johnston, Steven Narod, Warren Rubenstein and John R McLaughlin. Lung cancer risk in never-smokers: a population-based case-control study of epidemiologic risk factors. BMC Cancer, 2010,10:285 DOI: 10.1186/1471-2407-10-285
Boffetta, et al: Multicenter Case-Control Study of Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke and Lung Cancer in Europe, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Vol. 90, No. 19, October 7, 1998: “public indoor settings did not represent an important source of ETS exposure.” (This case-control study used data from the IARC. The period of enrollment of case and control subjects was from 1988 to 1994–16 years; IARC=International Agency for Research on Cancer.}
In addition, this large study looked at 38 years worth of data: Enstrom, JE and Kabat, GC. Environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality in a prospective study of Californians, 1960-98 BMJ 2003; 326:1057.This study found “No significant associations were found for current or former exposure to environmental tobacco smoke before or after adjusting for seven confounders and before or after excluding participants with pre-existing disease.” (This prospective study used American Cancer Society dataset.)
Lee Bickford • Feb 24, 2018 at 3:46 pm
Oh look: at least one of the sources you cite is of research that (as I suspected) was indeed funded by big tobacco: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Enstrom (Conflict of interest, much?) And, their research design and reporting methods were widely flawed and therefore discredited: http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/31/enstrom-amp-kabats-exposure-assessment-flawed It seems you’ve been cherry-picking your “evidence”, friend, so please don’t lecture the rest of us about how your argument supersedes any to the contrary.
Vinny Gracchus • Feb 24, 2018 at 4:11 pm
I see you still rely on ad hominem attacks. Engstrom was severely attacked, but the results and methodology presented by Enstrom and Kabat passed peer review prior to publication and the actual critique you present is partisan and flawed. You might do some deeper research and see that he won the law suit countering the claims of conflict of interest made against him.
If you are interested in objective discussion rather than polemic can read Enstrom and Kabat’s response to the criticism at BMJ. The editor’s comment (that is the editor of BMJ) follows:
“Editor”“Owing to the charged atmosphere surrounding the issue of passive smoking, our paper provoked strong reactions on bmj.com. The most disturbing reactions have come from the enforcers of political correctness who pose as disinterested scientists but are willing to use base means to trash a study whose results they dislike. They have no qualms about engaging in personal attacks and unfounded insinuations of dishonesty rather than judging research on its merits.1 The resulting confusion has misled many readers and diverted attention from the facts of the study.”
(Source: Passive Smoking. Author’s Reply. BMJ 2003; 327 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.327.7413.504 (Published 28 August 2003).
You make the accusation of cherry picking data when you in fact do the same. That is on top of your concerted attack absent any attempt at dialog from the outset of this tread. You opened a new account just to wage the attack and now rely on a lack of understanding of the literature and innumeracy to suppress dissent. That is a typical tobacco control tactic. My argument does not supersede any other and I don’t expect it too, but you don’t seem to want to hear any other perspective.
Vinny Gracchus • Feb 24, 2018 at 4:16 pm
The suppression of dissent is a common activist tactic. Indeed the partisan attack on Enstrom and Kabat’s paper has been widely researched. See for example: Sheldon Ungar and Dennis Bray. Silencing science: partisanship and the career of a publication disputing the dangers of secondhand smoke. Public Understanding of Science, January 1, 2005. The abstract follows:
“Abstract: This paper examines the silencing of science, that is, efforts to prevent the making of specific scientific claims in any or all of the arenas in which these claims are typically reported or circulated. Those trying to mute the reporting or circulation of scientific claims are termed “partisans.” The paper examines silencing through a systematic examination of the “rapid responses” to a smoking study published in the British Medical Journal claiming that secondhand smoke is not as dangerous as conventionally believed. Media coverage of the smoking study is also examined, as is the question of whether there is self-silencing by the media regarding doubts about the negative effects of passive smoke. The results suggest that the public consensus about the negative effects of passive smoke is so strong that it has become part of a regime of truth that cannot be intelligibly questioned.”