More On The Smoking Ban
For those interested, you can read the Smoke Free Task Force’s full report to the administration here. It’s worth a read, if just to see how biased and asinine the whole process has been. Join me as I wade through document and pick out some of my favorite parts. For example, this is part of the recap of the “forums” held to discuss the smoking ban:
A staff member stated we needed to look past the glamorous side of smoking. The smell of smoke makes him ill. He made the comparison of secondhand smoke to someone who is HIV positive spiting [sic] on another individual and being charged with assault.
A moderate and cogent analogy if I’ve ever heard one! Moving on the unsupported statements part of the report:
Secondhand smoke causes an estimated 800 deaths a year in Oregon [source?]. Exposure to as few as thirty minutes of secondhand smoke exposure can affect a person’s breathing [um, source?]. Workers exposed to secondhand smoke have a 35-50% increased risk of heart disease [no, really, source please]. Constant exposure to secondhand smoke nearly doubles the risk of a heart attack.
I’m sorry, but you fail Writing 121. Now to the creepy, culture change part of the report:
It is clear that making the campus entirely smoke free will only be successful if there is a change in the culture itself. Thus, the most important job of the implementation committee in general and the Project Coordinator in particular will be to educate the campus community about how this change in culture will be implemented over several years.
To the re-education camps, comrade! But there is some light at the end of the tunnel:
Recognition was given to the challenge of enforcing a new campus wide policy. The majority of other universities and colleges we contacted have no consequential enforcement for smoking policies. We recommend a strategy of education, individual responsibility, and action as necessary for only the most egregious violations of a smoke free campus policy.
What that means in normal, not-stupid speak is the university isn’t really going to enforce the smoking ban. I’m glad to the task force put in all that work to recommend a policy it doesn’t even think is feasible to enforce. Hooray for bureaucracy.
Check the archives for more on the history of the smoking ban.
