UAB should not be smoke-free
Posted on Aug 08, 2012 in Opinion
Had a bad day? Nerves on edge? Itching for a cigarette? Well, forget about it. For the past 15 years, the American Lung Association in Alabama has been working with several health organizations to raise public awareness about the risks of tobacco use. However, raising awareness isn’t what they’re all about. The association also advocates the prohibition of smoking in all public areas including campuses, workplaces, restaurants and even bars.
Although state legislators have not yet passed a bill that would put such a heavy restriction on smokers, several colleges in Alabama have already established a smoke-free campus. Some include ITT Tech in Bessemer, Troy University and Jacksonville State University. Our very own UAB might not be too far behind.
About 27 percent of students are smokers. How would such restrictions shape the students on campus that smoke? Many students attribute their smoking habit to alleviation of stress or depression.
I asked a fellow student how he would feel about a smoke-free campus, and his instant response was: “You gotta be kidding me. What am I going to do during finals?”
The most stressful time of the college semester is the last two weeks of classes when you think you’ve got it (or you know you don’t). You’re still pulling your hair out five seconds before the test. Well, for smokers those last five seconds are spent standing outside staring at a sheet of notes in one hand and a cigarette to calm their nerves in the other. Studies show that students who are more relaxed during test taking do better than those who are stressed or anxious. Thus, this restriction may actually lower the grades of students who are accustomed to using tobacco to calm their nerves.
All these things considered, the surveys of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still show that more than 70 percent of Alabama residents would support a bill that would prohibit smoking in all public places. The day when students will have to take a quick jog off campus to alleviate their stress seems to be fast approaching.
Erica Brock
Staff Writer
edydream@uab.edu
Would the smoking ban affect all outdoor areas on campus, or just specific areas? I ask because I’m a UAB alum who is now in graduate school in Virginia. Campuses in this state ban smoking indoors within 25 feet of the door. Other buildings (such as restaurants) must have a separate ventilation system for smoking areas. That seems to me to be a reasonable compromise between the right of the smoker to smoke & the right of the nonsmoker not to breathe second-hand smoke. If that’s the case with the AL proposal, it might not be as much as a problem as you might think – there haven’t been that many issues since the VA laws passed (though, of course, there have been a few).
Author and anti-prohibition advocate Michael Mcfadden said it best when it came to smokefree funded polls:
Something to be aware of when you see these “polls” claiming that “most people want a ban.” You’ll note that the numbers almost always come in at between 75 and 80%. That’s not an accident. These polls are usually bought and paid for by antismoking interests that are awash in tax money and can afford to hire the “best” pollsters to produce the results they want.
To give an example of what I am talking about, just visit the webpages of The Mellman Group. Check out their blurb about what they offer:
“Some pollsters simply report on opinions. We use the most sophisticated analytical tools available to understand the motivations of consumers and voters so we can intervene in their decision-making processes to produce the outcomes our clients want.”
Without knowing and intelligently evaluating the survey details and processes themselves, surveys are meaningless, particularly when sponsored by an advocacy group.
Forget the health issues. Let’s focus on freedom of choice.
It is my choice to breathe clean air. If you are an addict with a need to smoke, go somewhere where others are not compelled to watch your self-degradation, or to smell your wastes.
Society has already adjusted to people’s need to urinate and fart. Every individual may need to deal with these bodily functions at times, but your personal need does not justify you in forcing others to endure your bodily wastes.
Smoking may or may not be unhealthy. I don’t care. It is my choice to breathe air free from your bodily wastes. Smoking is an ugly, dirty addiction. If you are unable to get free from your habit kindly find a way to surrender yourself to your addiction in ways that do not inflict the effects of your behavior on others without their consent.
Nathan says, “It is my choice to breathe clean air.”
Clean air has an Air Quality Index rating of zero and does not contain radon with its carcinogenic by-products. If clean air is what you insist on, eliminating secondhand smoke won’t give it to you, so don’t waste all your steam on smokers.
If you’re afraid of second-hand smoke, you should also avoid cars, restaurants…and don’t even think of barbecuing.
here are just some of the chemicals present in tobacco smoke and what else contains them:
Arsenic, Benzine, Formaldehyde.
Arsenic- 8 glasses of water = 200 cigarettes worth of arsenic
Benzine- Grilling of one burger = 250 cigarettes
Formaldehyde – cooking a vegetarian meal = 100 cigarettes
When you drink your 8 glasses of tap water (64 ounces) a day, you’re safely drinking up to 18,000 ng of arsenic by government safety standards of 10 nanograms/gram (10 ng/gm = 18,000ng/64oz) for daily consumption.
Am I “poisoning” you with the arsenic from my cigarette smoke? Actually, with the average cigarette putting out 32 ng of arsenic into the air which is then diluted by normal room ventilation for an individual exposure of .032 ng/hour, you would have to hang out in a smoky bar for literally 660,000 hours every day (yeah, a bit hard, right?) to get the same dose of arsenic that the government tells you is safe to drink.
So you can see why claims that smokers are “poisoning” people are simply silly.
You can stay at home all day long if you don’t want all those “deadly” chemicals around you, but in fact, those alleged 4000-7000 theorized chemicals in cigarettes are present in many foods, paints etc. in much larger quantities. And as they are present in cigarettes in very small doses, they are harmless. Sorry, no matter how much you like the notion of harmful ETS, it’s a myth.
They have created a fear that is based on nothing’’
World-renowned pulmonologist, president of the prestigious Research Institute Necker for the last decade, Professor Philippe Even, now retired, tells us that he’s convinced of the absence of harm from passive smoking. A shocking interview.
What do the studies on passive smoking tell us?
PHILIPPE EVEN. There are about a hundred studies on the issue. First surprise: 40% of them claim a total absence of harmful effects of passive smoking on health. The remaining 60% estimate that the cancer risk is multiplied by 0.02 for the most optimistic and by 0.15 for the more pessimistic … compared to a risk multiplied by 10 or 20 for active smoking! It is therefore negligible. Clearly, the harm is either nonexistent, or it is extremely low.
It is an indisputable scientific fact. Anti-tobacco associations report 3 000-6 000 deaths per year in France …
I am curious to know their sources. No study has ever produced such a result.
Many experts argue that passive smoking is also responsible for cardiovascular disease and other asthma attacks. Not you?
They don’t base it on any solid scientific evidence. Take the case of cardiovascular diseases: the four main causes are obesity, high cholesterol, hypertension and diabetes. To determine whether passive smoking is an aggravating factor, there should be a study on people who have none of these four symptoms. But this was never done. Regarding chronic bronchitis, although the role of active smoking is undeniable, that of passive smoking is yet to be proven. For asthma, it is indeed a contributing factor … but not greater than pollen!
The purpose of the ban on smoking in public places, however, was to protect non-smokers. It was thus based on nothing?
Absolutely nothing! The psychosis began with the publication of a report by the IARC, International Agency for Research on Cancer, which depends on the WHO (Editor’s note: World Health Organization). The report released in 2002 says it is now proven that passive smoking carries serious health risks, but without showing the evidence. Where are the data? What was the methodology? It’s everything but a scientific approach. It was creating fear that is not based on anything.
Why would anti-tobacco organizations wave a threat that does not exist?
…
The anti-smoking campaigns and higher cigarette prices having failed, they had to find a new way to lower the number of smokers. By waving the threat of passive smoking, they found a tool that really works: social pressure. In good faith, non-smokers felt in danger and started to stand up against smokers. As a result, passive smoking has become a public health problem, paving the way for the Evin Law and the decree banning smoking in public places. The cause may be good, but I do not think it is good to legislate on a lie. And the worst part is that it does not work: since the entry into force of the decree, cigarette sales are rising again.
Why not speak up earlier?
As a civil servant, dean of the largest medical faculty in France, I was held to confidentiality. If I had deviated from official positions, I would have had to pay the consequences. Today, I am a free man.
Le Parisien
…
About 90% of secondary smoke is composed of water vapor and ordinary air with a minor amount of carbon dioxide. The volume of water vapor of second hand smoke becomes even larger as it qickly disperses into the air,depending upon the humidity factors within a set location indoors or outdoors. Exhaled smoke from a smoker will provide 20% more water vapor to the smoke as it exists the smokers mouth.
4 % is carbon monoxide.
6 % is those supposed 4,000 chemicals to be found in tobacco smoke. Unfortunatley for the smoke free advocates these supposed chemicals are more theorized than actually found.What is found is so small to even call them threats to humans is beyond belief.Nanograms,picograms and femptograms……
(1989 Report of the Surgeon General p. 80).