Today marks the
one-year anniversary of UCLA going tobacco-free. UCLA joined more than 1,000 other colleges
and universities that have adopted clean air policies, well ahead of the
University of California Office of the President requirement that all of the
University of California campuses be tobacco-free by Jan. 1, 2014. This
anniversary gives us an opportunity to reflect on where we are with the policy
and what remains to be done. We are gratified that more than 70,000 students,
staff and faculty as well as the thousands of visitors each year embraced a policy
that means clean air for all.
During the past year, the Tobacco-Free Policy Implementation committee has continued to evaluate the impact of the policy and listen to concerns from individuals. Some of these emails have noted that smoking continues in certain areas on campus, and the resistance of some smokers to comply with the tobacco-free policy. Be assured, we have been meeting with administrators responsible for those buildings and we also have worked with community service officers to assure that those on our campus are aware of the policy. We have continued to evaluate the need for additional signs in areas where “hot spots” have emerged, as evidenced by cigarette litter and direct observation. Intervening with smokers who violate the policy can be challenging and, at times, uncomfortable. However, everyone is entitled to fresh air and we all must be involved if we want to assure that this happens on our campus. UC has created several YouTube videos describing sensitive approaches to this problem that are available at the bottom of the public resources section of UCLA’s tobacco-free policy webpage.
Today is also Earth Day. We purposefully selected this day to draw attention to the fact that cigarette butts are the leading cause of litter in California.
Although the overall number of cigarette butts has decreased since our policy was enacted, there are some areas of campus where the accumulation of cigarette butts is an ongoing issue. Despite the ongoing efforts of our grounds crew, cigarette butt litter continues to accumulate at locations throughout the campus. Even with trash cans in close proximity, cigarette butts are discarded in the gardens and make their way to the ocean through the runoff. The Wellness on Campus committee will be sponsoring a “Move your Butts” litter cleanup on Wednesday so that all Bruins can be involved in this effort.
The UC campus tobacco-free policy also bans the use of e-cigarettes. These battery-operated devices are unregulated products that produce a vapor of aerosolized nicotine. They are not approved as cessation devices and the level of nicotine varies from product to product. One of the reasons that these products were included in the UC policy was the challenge that it would otherwise pose for enforcement. The city of Los Angeles adopted a similar ordinance that prohibits use of e-cigarettes in the same places where use of regular cigarettes are prohibited. E-cigarettes are big business and we have invited two experts to speak to the campus on Tuesday regarding the emerging scientific evidence about these products as well as the data on the multimillion dollar marketing campaign.
This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the first Surgeon General’s report on the risks of smoking to health. Since the 1964 report was published, an estimated 20 million people have died prematurely from smoking. More than 2 million deaths from heart disease and more than 260,000 deaths from lung cancer were caused by exposure to secondhand smoke.
The latest Surgeon General’s report expands the list of diseases and conditions to include liver cancer, colorectal cancer, diabetes, tuberculosis, erectile dysfunction and ectopic pregnancy, among others. The health risks of women who smoke are now equal to those of men. Stroke is now recognized as causally associated with exposure to secondhand smoke. Some of the most gratifying consequences of our policies are the anecdotal reports of Bruins who have quit because of the policy or who have made attempts at quitting. It often takes several attempts before a smoker is able to stay off cigarettes. We hope that the UCLA policy will create a “new normal” of a smoke-free environment.
Sarna is a professor in the UCLA School of Nursing and co-chair of the UCLA Tobacco-Free Task Force. Ong is a professor in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and co-chair of the Tobacco-Free Task Force.
Install ashtrays, diminish litter. Swallow your pride and offer a rational solution. Jesus.
Despite signage, University Kentucky is not a tobacco free campus
When UK’s campus-wide tobacco ban went into effect in November of 2009, protesters voiced their disapproval by congregating on campus to smoke together. More than four years after, I often pass noncompliant individuals continuing to harm themselves, their friends and the local environment by smoking on campus.
The American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation reported at the beginning of the year that there are 811 colleges and universities with tobacco free policies. However, a policy only makes a campus tobacco free in principle.
Travel around UK’s campus and observe. Would you consider it to be a tobacco-free campus? The label “tobacco-free campus” is superficial; at best, we are a tobacco-reduced campus. Only when pedestrians never encounter smoke clouds can UK advertise itself as truly tobacco-free. Currently, though, the ban is simply an initiative and a goal.
Why do smokers disobey the nearly five-year-old policy, and when will this regular diregard of the policy end?
According to UK’s Tobacco-Free Policy website, ignorance of the policy is countered by the Tobacco-free Ambassadors — members of the Tobacco-Free Take Action! team. TFTA! members try to increase compliance to the policy by approaching tobacco users and doling out a scripted line to inform them of the policy. Furthermore, anyone can report smokers through the UK Tobacco-Free website.
http://kykernel.com/2014/04/15/94327/
UK Kentucky University smoking ban was an utter failure well here it is in print.
Students need options for smoking on campus, not an absolute policy
Students at UK shouldn’t need to argue the meaning of the word “no” in the no-tobacco policy on campus. If there are going to be students, professors, administrators and doctors smoking on campus then let’s just come right out and say it. We tried a no-tobacco policy. It didn’t work.
It has been four years since the policy was put in place. There are signs all over campus and it is in every student’s handbook — people just don’t care.
With such high awareness for the policy, the highest potential for it to make a difference has been reached and if anything, the reputation of the policy’s poor enforcement will only increase the amount of abuse. Smoking and using tobacco products is a lifestyle choice, much like one’s diet, but the externalities of tobacco use are much different. While smoking causes health problems for surrounding people, it doesn’t mean we should extinguish their lifestyle anymore than we should force a vegan to eat a rib eye steak.
………………………..http://kykernel.com/2014/04/14/students-need-options-for-smoking-on-campus-not-an-absolute-policy/
Its pretty well the case everywhere the campus wide smoking bans are complete failures in some instances Professors and students are even smoking INDOORS!
This pretty well destroys the Myth of second hand smoke:
http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/28/16741714-lungs-from-pack-a-day-smokers-safe-for-transplant-study-finds?lite
Lungs from pack-a-day smokers safe for transplant, study finds.
By JoNel Aleccia, Staff Writer, NBC News.
Using lung transplants from heavy smokers may sound like a cruel joke, but a new study finds that organs taken from people who puffed a pack a day for more than 20 years are likely safe.
What’s more, the analysis of lung transplant data from the U.S. between 2005 and 2011 confirms what transplant experts say they already know: For some patients on a crowded organ waiting list, lungs from smokers are better than none.
ECIG VAPOR HARMLESS TO CHILDREN and its used as an aerosol disinfectant in hospitals approved back in the 1950s by the FDA!
UNITED STATES ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY WASHINGTON, D.C. 20460
OFFICE OF PREVENTION, PESTICIDES AND TOXIC SUBSTANCES
CERTIFIED MAIL
Dear Registrant:
This is to inform you that the Environmental Protection Agency (hereafter referred to as EPA or the Agency) has completed its review of the available data for the antimicrobials propylene glycol and dipropylene glycol. The Reregistration Eligibility Decision (RED) was approved in the form of a decision memorandum which summarized the regulatory decision for propylene glycol and dipropylene glycol on September 30, 2004. Based on its review, EPA is now publishing its Reregistration Eligibility Decision (RED) for propylene glycol and dipropylene glycol and its associated human health and environmental risks. A Notice of Availability will be published in the Federal Register announcing the publication of the RED.
The RED and supporting documents for propylene glycol and dipropylene glycol will be available to the public in EPA’s Pesticide Docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2006-0831 at: http://www.regulations.gov.
Please note that the attached RED document pertains only to propylene glycol and dipropylene glycol. This RED presents the Agency’s conclusions on the dietary, drinking water, occupational and ecological risks posed by exposure to propylene glycol or dipropylene glycol alone. This document also contains product-specific data that the Agency intends to require in Data Call-Ins (DCIs). Note that DCIs, with all pertinent instructions, will be sent to registrants at a later date. Currently, there are no generic data requirements. Additionally, for product- specific DCIs, the first set of required responses will be due 90 days from the receipt of the DCI letter. The second set of required responses will be due eight months from the receipt of the DCI letter.
As part of the RED, the Agency has determined that propylene glycol and dipropylene glycol are eligible for reregistration. Sections IV and V of this RED document describe product- specific data requirements.
http://mnvapers.com/2014/04/epa-fda-vapor-harmless-children/
The link to the actual paper is a PDF link in that story.
SECOND HAND SMOKE BENEFICIAL TO CHILDREN
The inconvenient truth is that the only studies of children of smokers suggest it is PROTECTIVE in contracting atopy in the first place. The New Zealand study says by a staggering factor of 82%.
“Participants with atopic parents were also less likely to have positive SPTs between ages 13 and 32 years if they smoked themselves (OR=0.18), and this reduction in risk remained significant after adjusting for confounders.
The authors write: “We found that children who were exposed to parental smoking and those who took up cigarette smoking themselves had a lower incidence of atopy to a range of common inhaled allergens.
“These associations were found only in those with a parental history of asthma or hay fever.”
They conclude: Our findings suggest that preventing allergic sensitization is not one of them.”
The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
Volume 121, Issue 1 , Pages 38-42.e3, January 2008
http://www.jacionline.org/article/S00…(07)01954-9/abstract
.
This is a Swedish study.
“Children of mothers who smoked at least 15 cigarettes a day tended to have lower odds for suffering from allergic rhino-conjunctivitis, allergic asthma, atopic eczema and food allergy, compared to children of mothers who had never smoked (ORs 0.6-0.7)
CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates an association between current exposure to tobacco smoke and a low risk for atopic disorders in smokers themselves and a similar tendency in their children.”
Clin Exp Allergy 2001 Jun;31(6):908-14
Colleges being forced to go smokefree by Obama Administration
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced an initiative to ban smoking from college campuses last month. This is part of the HHS goal to create a society free of tobacco-related disease and death, according to their action plan released by the HHS in 2010.
Colleges who fail to enact campus-wide smoking bans and other tobacco-free policies may soon face the loss of grants and contracts from the HHS…, according to the plan. Western receives grants through a subdivision of the HHS called the National Institutes of Health, Acting Vice Provost for Research Kathleen Kitto said.
http://www.westernfrontonline.net/news/article_f8068f12-0efe-11e2-8b41-001a4bcf6878.html?success=1
Obama administration to push for eliminating smoking on college campuses
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/11/obama … z29zJ2V2TV
President Barack Obama has already promised not to smoke cigarettes in the White House. If his administration has its way, American college students will soon be required to follow suit while they’re on campus.
Howard Koh, assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will announce a national initiative Wednesday at the University of Michigan School of Public Health to stamp out tobacco use on college campuses.
It’s America that’s popularized antismoking insanity – again, and which other countries are following suit. The problem with Americans is that they are clueless to even their own recent history. America has a terrible history with this sort of “health” fanaticism/zealotry/extremism or “clean living” hysteria – including antismoking – that goes back more than a century.
Antismoking is not new. It has a long, sordid, 400+ year history, much of it
predating even the semblance of a scientific basis or the more recent
concoction of secondhand smoke “danger”. Antismoking crusades typically run on
inflammatory propaganda, i.e., lies, in order to get law-makers to institute
bans. Statistics and causal attribution galore are conjured. The current
antismoking rhetoric has all been heard before. All it produces is irrational
fear and hatred, discord, enmity, animosity, social division, oppression, and
bigotry. One of the two major antismoking (and anti-alcohol, dietary
prescriptions/proscriptions, physical exercise) crusades early last century was
in America. [The other crusade was in WWII Germany and the two crusades were intimately connected by physician-led eugenics]. The USA has been down this twisted, divisive path before. Consider the following: The bulk of claims made about smoking/tobacco were erroneous, baseless, but highly inflammatory. Unfortunately, the propaganda did its destructive job in the short term, producing mass hysteria or a bigotry bandwagon. When supported by the State, zealots seriously mess with people’s minds on a mass scale.
http://www.americanheritage.com/content/thank-you-not-smoking
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19981129&slug=2786034
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2352989/pdf/bmj00571-0040.pdf
The current antismoking crusade, very much in the eugenics tradition –
involving the same personnel and methodology, is much like crusades over the
previous 400 years. It is a moralizing, social-engineering, eradication/prohibition
crusade decided upon in the 1970s by a small, self-installed clique of [medically-oriented]mfanatics operating under the auspices of the World Health Organization and sponsored by the American Cancer Society (see the Godber Blueprint http://www.rampant-antismoking.com ). This little, unelected group, using much the same inflammatory rhetoric of its fanatical predecessors, decided for everyone that tobacco-use should be eradicated from the world – for a “better” (according to them) world. These fanatics were speaking of secondhand smoke “danger” and advocating indoor and OUTDOOR smoking bans years before the first study on SHS: In the 1970s, populations – particularly in relatively free societies – weren’t interested in elitist social-engineering, particularly by a group (medically-aligned) that had a horrible recent track record (eugenics). Given that their antismoking
crusade would have otherwise stalled, the zealots conjured secondhand smoke
“danger” to advance the social-engineering agenda, i.e., inflammatory
propaganda. Until only recently the zealots claimed they weren’t doing social
engineering, that they weren’t moralizing. Well, that’s a lie that’s been told
many times over the last few decades.
The zealots’ goal this time is not to ban the sale of tobacco but to ban smoking in essentially all the places that people smoke (combined with extortionate taxes). Up until recently the social-engineering intent has been masqueraded as protecting nonsmokers from secondhand smoke “danger”. But even this fraud can no longer be hidden in that bans are now being instituted for large outdoor areas such as parks, beaches, campuses where there is no demonstrable “health” issue for nonsmokers. This dangerous mix of the medically-aligned attempting social engineering is a throwback to a century ago. We seem to have learned nothing of value from very painful lessons of only the recent past.
Here’s a brief history of the antismoking madness (Godber Blueprint) over
the last few decades.
The first demand for a smoking ban was in the late-1980s concerning
short-haul flights in the USA of less than 2 hours. At the time, the antismokers were asked if this was a “slippery slope” – where would it end? They ridiculed anyone suggesting such because this ban was ALL that they were after.
Then they ONLY wanted smoking bans on all flights.
Then the antismokers ONLY wanted nonsmoking sections in restaurants, bars,
etc., and ensuring that this was ALL they wanted.
Then the antismokers ONLY wanted complete bans indoors. That was all they
wanted. At the time, no-one was complaining about having to “endure” wisps of
smoke outdoors.
While they pursued indoor bans, the antismokers were happy for smokers to be
exiled to the outdoors. Having bulldozed their way into indoor bans, the
antismokers then went to work on the outdoors, now declaring that momentary
exposure to remnants of smoke in doorways or a whiff outdoors was a “hazard”,
more than poor, innocent nonsmokers should have to “endure”.
Then they ONLY wanted bans within 10 feet of entrance ways.
Then they ONLY wanted bans within 20 feet of entrance ways.
Then they ONLY wanted bans in entire outdoor dining areas.
Then they ONLY wanted bans for entire university and hospital campuses and
parks and beaches.
Then they ONLY wanted bans for apartment balconies.
Then they ONLY wanted bans for entire apartment (including individual
apartments) complexes.
On top of all of this, there are now instances where smokers are denied
employment, denied housing (even the elderly), and denied medical treatment.
Smokers in the UK are denied fostering/adoption. Involuntary mental patients are restrained physically or chemically (sedation) or multi-day solitary confinement rather than allow them to have a cigarette – even outside. In some countries there are also compounded extortionate taxes.
At each point there was a crazed insistence that there was no more to come
while they were actually planning the next ban and the brainwashing required to
push it. The incessant claim was that they were not doing “social engineering”
(prohibition) when the current antismoking crusade has been so from the outset,
just like pretty well every previous antismoking crusade. There has been
incessant (pathological) lying and deception. Many medically-aligned groups
have been committed to antismoking – their smokefree “utopia” – since the 1960s,
and are also in the pay of Pharma companies peddling their useless “nicotine
replacement” products. They have prostituted their medical authority and
integrity to chase ideology (this is exactly what occurred in the eugenics of
early last century). All of it is working to a tobacco-extermination plan run
by the WHO (dominated by the American “model”) and that most nations are now
signed-up to (Framework Convention on Tobacco Control).
To Linda Sarna & Michael Ong,
Why do you know nothing of the history of antismoking, particularly in America?
If you had such familiarity, you would understand that antismoking zealots lie
incessantly to push for their deranged ideological “cause” – their smokefree “utopia”.
Linda & Michael, at the moment you’re just parroting the standard antismoking propaganda. The Office of the Surgeon-General and the Centers for Disease Control have long been hijacked by antismoking activists. Do you know how those “death tolls” that you quote are arrived at? Those “deaths” occur in a statistical fantasy world.
What’s happened to university students of today? They don’t seem to be able to think at all. They don’t seem to be able to conduct even some basic research. They just toe the “official” line. It’s woeful.
So, Linda & Michael, do you know what a bigotry bandwagon is? You should find out because currently you’re contributing to one. And it’s nothing to be proud of.
ROFLMAO The city I was born in finally gets it right! Little do they know who fought em tooth and nail……………
Plan to pass another smoking ban for Evansville is dead
Posted: Apr 22, 2014 3:47 PM CDT
Updated: Apr 22, 2014 3:47 PM CDT
By Allyson Kraemer – email
It’s been two months since the city-wide smoking ban in Evansville was overturned by the Indiana Supreme Court.
As we first reported, Mayor Lloyd Winnecke went back to the drawing board to come up with new options for an ordinance.
We’re told several options were discussed, but ultimately the plan to pass another smoking ban is dead.
City council members say there are several reasons why a new smoking ban won’t be drafted.
Councilman Jonathan Weaver says the majority of local businesses remain smoke free. He says a very small number, including the VFW and 711 Tavern, brought smoking back into their buildings.
More importantly, the decision to not enact a new ban is motivated by money.
Council President John Friend says a new smoking ban that would include Tropicana Casino would negatively impact revenues – money that is already ear-marked for downtown projects.
“It could have a negative impact on that medical school,” said Friend. “If there was any sort of smoking ban, that would effect that boat. It has a domino effect all the way down the line with it. I think those people on that boat, that work that boat, why is there health any less important than those ones and others? I felt that and then I relented when I saw the money, I did that.”
Friend tells us the city lost about $800,000 from Tropicana when Ellis Park brought in new slot machines and they simply can’t afford doing anything that would cause them to lose any more money.
Signage on the perimeter of OHSU which has been smoke-free since 2007 and is a much cleaner campus than UCLA: http://instagram.com/p/l3UK1hHJ4x/
I wonder if motor vehicles are banned on you “clean air” campus?