If secondhand smoke is a hazard that requires a legislated solution, then it requires a legislated solution. And if it doesn’t require a legislated solution, then it doesn’t. This Oklahoma public policy makes no sense at all.
Smokers beware: University tobacco ban begins, could cost violators up to $50 fine
July 2, 2012
by Tory Smith
Smoke at your own risk, Sooners. Anyone caught lighting up on campus now risks paying up to a $50 fine after a tobacco ban went into effect.
The ban is in response to Gov. Mary Fallin’s Feb. 6 executive order that prohibits the use of tobacco products on state property — including public college campuses. The statewide ban goes into effect Aug. 6, but the OU Board of Regents unanimously approved the university’s own tobacco-free policy, which began Sunday.
OU’s policy — which applies to students, visitors, faculty and staff — will be enforced by the OU Police Department. However, the department first will rely on voluntary compliance, OU police Lt. Bruce Chan said.
“The university as a whole has a responsibility to enforce the policy,” Chan said.
If enforcement is necessary, university officers first will issue a warning, he said.
“We don’t want to issue a fine the first time we meet them,” Chan said. “We’d rather educate them — let them know that this policy is in place.”
After receiving a warning, a $10 fine will be issued for a second offense, and subsequent offenses will warrant a $50 fine, university spokesman Michael Nash said.
Students who receive a citation will pay the fine through their bursar account, Nash said.
Chan said OUPD officers won’t have designated patrols solely for enforcing the policy but will investigate if they receive complaints.
“We’re not going to drive around looking for people who are smoking,” he said.
OU Facilities Management will be responsible for posting signs reminding people of the ban and will remove the smoking poles on campus, Nash said.
Facilities Management Director Brian Ellis is working with administrators to complete the project, Nash said.
COMMUNITY REACTION
Not every campus smoker plans to quit, and many will move to nearby off-campus locations to smoke.
Royal Pipes and Tobacco Ltd. is located just across the street from OU’s campus, and owner Jared Summers said he thinks the ban will increase his business because of store’s proximity and tobacco-friendliness.
“They are pushing people my way, I suppose, which helps my store grow,” he said.
Summers said the store is a favorite hangout for OU professors, students and police, who discuss politics and other matters together while they smoke.
“There’s more conversation there than in most places,” he said.
Anthropology and linguistics sophomore Faith Bulger is against the ban and said it isn’t fair to smokers.
She said she liked Boren’s original plan with designated smoking areas because it took into consideration those who want and need to smoke. She said Fallin didn’t consider those same people when making the executive order.
“I understand [smoking is] offensive to people who don’t smoke, but to completely cut us off from something that we take part in wasn’t necessarily fair,” she said. “It’s going to be really difficult for some of the staff — some of them have been smoking for years and are dependent on it.”
Other students — like Kelsey Jones, Spanish sophomore, and Madeline Dillner, earth and sustainability senior — are in favor of the ban because they won’t have to inhale secondhand smoke on the way to class.
“I think it’s great personally. I hate having to walk behind when people are smoking,” Dillner said. “It makes me have a better day.”
RESOURCES TO QUIT
For those who do wish to kick the habit, Healthy Sooners will continue to offer free smoking cessation classes to OU students, faculty and staff this July at the Goddard Health Center.
Healthy Sooners began offering the classes in March, health educator Nicole Pritchard said in an email.
The program is based on the QuitSmart program — a self-help method developed by Robert H. Shipley, a medical psychology professor at Duke University — but Healthy Sooners tailors classes to accommodate attendees’ individual needs, Pritchard said.
Though official success rates have not yet been determined because the program is so new, Pritchard said Healthy Sooners has helped several students and faculty successfully quit tobacco.
Pritchard said enrollment has remained steady since the program began, and she said she hopes to see an increase as students, faculty and staff come back to campus this fall.
COLUMN: Tobacco ban or not, smokers will find a way at OU
August 2, 2012
by Trent Cason
This fall, nicotine addicts like myself will have an additional monkey on their backs as we get back into the swing of school.
A tobacco ban is officially in full effect. It applies to the entire campus — which is probably quite a bit bigger than you think — and all buildings and lands owned or leased by the university, including vehicles. Look at the campus map on oZONE, everything tinted tan on the map is OU property.
A first violation of the ban results in a warning, a second violation is a $10 fine and a third violation will cost $50. That’s a lot of money as far as I’m concerned, so my options are to walk off of OU property to smoke — if I have time — or creep around campus all nimbly-bimbly, sneaking drags of cigarettes in the nooks and crannies of our honorable institution.
How did I get to this place, where I’m either walking down Lindsey Street for no reason three to five times a day or I’m evading the police between Philosophy of Aesthetics and Major Figures in Literary Theory?
I started smoking in high school when I was invincible. Then I went into the military, where time could be measured in cups of coffee and smoke breaks as easily as hours and minutes. Now I’m out and trying to quit for good, but it’s not going so great. Last semester, as soon as the stress hit, I was compulsively buying a pack of lights. I’m a raging addict. I know it, and I’m wrestling with it. But I’m not alone.
About 28 percent of college students smoke, according to an ABC news report. I was unable to obtain national or local data on smokeless tobacco use, but it can’t be far behind judging by all of the spit bottles in campus trash cans.
According to the same report, most of the students who leave OU as smokers will have started smoking here, which is sad. The biggest contributing factors to starting a nicotine habit are weight loss and alcohol consumption. Help your friends out and give them a hard time if they start smoking.
President David Boren initially intended to have two designated smoking areas on campus, which I found to be a good compromise. It would eliminate walking through clouds of smoke around buildings and sidewalks, while still accommodating people who are sincerely addicted and need it to focus in their next class.
I appreciated this compromise, and as a smoker, I was satisfied with my end of the deal. I was prepared to smoke only in designated areas and to keep those areas as clean as possible by policing up stray cigarette butts, something I do anyway in gardens and fountains around campus. It felt like a win-win outcome.
Enter Gov. Mary Fallin, self-proclaimed proponent of smaller, less-intrusive government and individual rights. Fallin signed an executive order recently, which completely banned smoking on all state property, including OU.
It seems to me that Boren considered the best interests of the students and the surrounding landscape. Fallin appears to have considered only the political end of the decision, leaving a sizeable group of us alienated when a solution was already in place. Thanks, Governor.
Unfortunately, now we are left at an impasse, the place where I and about 6,678 of my fellow smokers at OU are faced with being agitated all day or becoming cigarette ninjas.
I watched the same thing happen at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond before I transferred to OU. Every alcove and cubby on campus has two or three students or faculty huddled in it between classes, quickly smoking and looking around nervously. It’s undignified.
In addition, the sidewalks, yards and parking lots across the street from the campus are littered with cigarette butts and grouchy-looking smokers, the ones who had time to make the walk to an approved smoking area, which in many cases is someone’s front yard.
Ideally, Boren would ignore Fallin and give smokers a place in one of the parking lots. It’s totally fair to give people a fine if you have provided them with a place to smoke away from the buildings and the South Oval and they break your rule anyway.
Nicotine addicts are junkies — they will do some crazy stuff for a cigarette. A fine definitely falls into the category of acceptable risk versus the alternative — withdrawal.
Giving people nowhere to go if they have a tight schedule is forcing their hand. A few will hopefully just quit, and if they can, good for them. The rest of us who smoke or dip are going to break the rule sometimes.
That’s my prediction, based on what I know of myself and smokers in general. It all seems like such a waste of energy and makes me that much more annoyed with myself for ever having started in the first place.
Let the game of hide-and-seek begin. Good luck, and welcome back.
Trent Cason is a literature and cultural studies senior.
Don’t believe the lies about secondhand smoke
01/22/2011
By Theodore J. King
Recently, Alan, a friend on my Facebook fan page for my book, The War on Smokers and the Rise of the Nanny State, asked me: “…what’s your take on the report from the surgeon general, Thursday, that only one cigarette kills millions of people and causes global warming and makes kittens cry?” Well, my take on that is this: what the new, portly surgeon general, Dr. Regina M. Benjamin, reported, if not as Alan described it, is also absurd, and she thinks people will believe it because she is, after all, a doctor and a government official. Her absurd report is this: even only brief exposure to secondhand smoke causes really bad health problems.
I should explain why I refer to the new surgeon general as portly, i.e. somewhat stout. I do so because she is. I could, I suppose, just say she is fat. The point is that her rotund size is significant because she is the chief of the health police. Why should we pay attention to her pronouncements on health when she is fat? Unlike the Labor Department secretary during the Clinton years who was ridiculed because he was of short stature and couldn’t grow taller, the S.G. can do something about her weight, i.e. lose some of it, not only for the sake of her health but also for her credibility when pontificating on a purported health issue.
I criticize her report that only brief exposure to secondhand smoke causes really bad health problems. Her report is absurd, but you needn’t take my word for it. Instead, read the recent words quoted below, written by Dr. Michael Siegel. Dr. Siegel is a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health. He has spent 25 years in the field of tobacco control and spent two years working in the Office of Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control, where he conducted research on secondhand smoke and cigarette advertising:
Fortunately, it is simply not true that even brief exposure to secondhand smoke can cause cardiovascular disease. Luckily, it takes many years of exposure before the process of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) can occur. If brief tobacco smoke exposure could cause heart disease, we would sadly see many young people in their twenties and thirties walking around with cardiovascular disease, and many dying from it at those ages. Even active smoking does not generally lead to heart disease unless you smoke for many years. Thus, it is simply untrue to assert that brief exposure to secondhand smoke can cause cardiovascular disease. [Emphasis mine.]
This is a man who has published nearly 70 papers related to tobacco. He testified in the landmark Engle lawsuit against the tobacco companies, which resulted in an unprecedented $145 billion verdict against the tobacco industry. He is definitely not a fan of tobacco. He is a thin man of science, not a portly political appointee.
In Oklahoma, where I live, the State Department of Health advertises ad nauseam on television and radio the phony evils of secondhand smoke by proclaiming: “Secondhand smoke — no one should have to breathe it.” Although this slogan is partly true because no one should have to breathe it, even though breathing it isn’t harmful unless it is breathed for “many years” (Dr. Siegel’s words), the slogan is mostly, basically, and essentially false because it implies that a nonsmoker may have to breathe secondhand smoke. It is false, a lie, because in Oklahoma and in virtually every other state, NO ONE HAS TO BREATHE SECONDHAND SMOKE BECAUSE SMOKING IS BANNED EVERYWHERE except in stand-alone bars and separately-ventilated rooms in restaurants where nonsmokers don’t go anyway. So, because smokers are not permitted by state law to smoke in the presence of nonsmokers, there is no secondhand smoke for them to breathe. There is not even the brief exposure that the portly S.G. has condemned. Oklahoma smokers may smoke only in their aforementioned ghettoes — and in their homes, at least until the nanny staters invade homes with smoking bans.
The myths about secondhand smoke are lies and the product of the mass hysteria the nanny state has wrought that has overcome reason. The hidden and sly purpose of the attack on secondhand smoke is to convince everyone, even rational, smart people, that smoking is not only unhealthy but evil and that all tobacco should be banished from the earth.
Theodore J. King is the author of the book The War on Smokers and the Rise of the Nanny State, available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Books a Million. He has been a columnist for the conservative quarterly The Oklahoma Constitution newspaper since 2000.
By Theodore (Modest Proposal) King
OSU Stillwater campus goes tobacco free?????
Tuesday, 01 July 2008?
View President’s message
Tobacco Stops Here website
?
“This is an important step in creating a healthier, cleaner and more attractive campus,” said OSU President Burns Hargis. “I applaud our students, faculty and staff for bringing this important issue forward.”
http://osu.okstate.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task;=view&id;=1088&Itemid;=1
Oklahoma Restaurants Must Become Smoke-Free or Smoke-Filled by March 1; When Will this Stupidity End?
By Michael Siegel
The restaurant provisions of Oklahoma’s Smoking in Public Places and Indoor Workplaces Act become effective in just 2 weeks. Although the law initially went into effect in September 2003, restaurants were exempt from the law until March 1, 2006, at which time they may either eliminate smoking completely, or restrict it to enclosed, separately ventilated rooms of any size. Bars are permanently exempt from the state law, which preempts any local regulation of smoking in bars, restaurants, workplaces, or public places.
In a state Department of Health press release issued to inform restaurants of their options and explain the reasons behind the law, the State Health Commissioner explained: “We applaud and thank the restaurants that have become entirely smokefree ahead of the legal deadline of March 1, 2006. For the health of their employees and patrons, we strongly encourage all others to do so as quickly as possible. Smokefree environments benefit the health of employees and customers alike… .”
The State Health Commissioner noted that “although a restaurant may be permitted to create a smoking room under Oklahoma’’s new laws, such rooms are typically costly to build and to operate, and a smoking room would still subject employees and patrons alike to hazardous secondhand smoke exposure.”
The Rest of the Story
In their infinite wisdom, legislators in Oklahoma have decided that secondhand smoke is a severe enough hazard for restaurant workers who are exposed to moderate levels so that smoking must be banned, but not severe enough for restaurant workers who are exposed to extremely high levels who will not be touched by the legislation.
Evidence demonstrates that levels of secondhand smoke in enclosed, separately ventilated rooms are, on average, more than 10 times higher than in restaurants where smoking is allowed anywhere (see: Siegel M, Husten C, Merritt R, Giovino G, Eriksen M: The health effects of separately ventilated smoking lounges on smokers: Is this an appropriate public health policy? Tobacco Control 1995; 4:22-29).
Thus, from a public health standpoint, it is far better to not regulate smoking at all in restaurants than it is to restrict it to separately ventilated rooms. While exposure among restaurant workers in establishments that allow smoking is relatively low (at least compared to smoking rooms), levels of exposure in smoking rooms are astronomical. Average nicotine levels are only about 6 ug/m3 in a restaurant that allows smoking, but 70 ug/m3 in a separately ventilated smoking room.
In fact, I have estimated that, assuming a relative risk of about 1.3 for the effect of secondhand smoke on lung cancer risk, restricting smoking to separately ventilated areas would likely result in an increase in lung cancer deaths in the population. This is because any gains from reducing secondhand smoke exposure among workers will be far more than offset by the losses due to increased secondhand smoke exposure of those in the smoke-filled smoking rooms.
While it is true that many restaurants may decide not to take on the expense of creating a separately ventilated smoking room, the state has no control over that. It is entirely possible that many restaurants will take advantage of this opportunity to continue catering to their smoking patrons, especially if it is true that smoking bans lead to decreases in revenue for restaurants.
If secondhand smoke is a hazard that requires a legislated solution, then it requires a legislated solution. And if it doesn’t require a legislated solution, then it doesn’t. This Oklahoma public policy makes no sense at all.
Moreover, public health advocates who supported this legislation cannot argue either that: (1) the state will simply strengthen the law in the future; or (2) localities will enact stronger laws. The former is unlikely, because once restaurant owners install expensive ventilation systems, it is unfair to require them to go totally smoke-free. The latter is not possible because of the preemption in the law.
Interestingly, there is no size limit on the allowed smoking rooms in restaurants. So a restaurant could essentially create a separately ventilated room that takes up most of the establishment, as long as it provides at least a few nonsmoking seats outside of that room. This is a method by which any restaurant could essentially skirt the law if it wants to. Just create a very small separately ventilated area for nonsmokers and then as long as it is enclosed, the rest of the restaurant can be allocated to smoking and non-smoking however the restaurant owner desires.
If secondhand smoke is as bad for workers as the Oklahoma legislature apparently feels (by virtue of their exercising the state’s police powers to regulate the conduct of private businesses), then there is simply no public health logic to allowing workers to be exposed to extremely high levels of secondhand smoke in smoking rooms.
Without question, this law is going to increase secondhand smoke exposure for a number of workers in Oklahoma. And that number is totally up to the restaurant owners in the state. The legislature has absolutely no control over the health of the state’s restaurant workers. They have abdicated responsibility over this health hazard to the whim of restaurant owners. To me, that’s not public health. That’s stupidity.
