Smoke blown in your face as you’re walking through campus is not a good feeling. There are times when I’ll see a smoker approaching me and in order to avoid smelling the cigarette smoke, I’ll start walking in a different direction. That’s pretty sad. People shouldn’t have to change the path in which they are walking just to avoid a smoker. Since I have asthma this issue affects me more than other people. It’s already hard for me to breathe as it is, so when cigarette smoke is thrown into the mix, it makes it ten times harder to breathe.
Smoking on campus does not have to be an issue anymore. There are already 60 college campuses around the U.S. that have smoke free policies that affect the entire campus. On these campuses smoking is banned indoors, in dorm rooms, in student facilities as well as throughout the campus. Once a college campus becomes a smoke-free campus the air becomes cleaner, and the campus itself becomes cleaner since there are not any cigarette butts lying around.
This idea may seem terrible for people who do smoke, but this can also be seen as a great opportunity for smokers to quit. A big issue that people face when deciding to quit is that there is not a support group available to help them quit, but there are programs aimed at supporting college students who decide to stop smoking. The American Cancer Society encourages campus directors to give out items such as gum and support information to people who are interested in quitting. This type of information lets students know that the faculty members as well as other students are there to support them, and that they are not alone when deciding to quit.
The reality of the situation is that prohibiting smoking on campus altogether might be a hard first step. In order to make the transition a bit easier, the campus should first designate areas where students are allowed to smoke. These areas would be away from entrances to buildings and away from any areas where people usually walk or gather. There would only be a few designated areas for smoking on campus, making it harder for smokers to get to one, thus convincing them to start thinking about quitting. The Daily Lobo did a survey on this issue and 42% of students thought there should be designated areas for smoking on campus, so that people who want to avoid those areas are able to.
I think that once UNM starts designating specific areas for smoking, it will become easier to stop smoking on campus altogether from that point. The majority of UNM’s student population seems to agree on this issue, but the question is, how can we get this movement started?
Smoking on campus does not have to be an issue anymore. There are already 60 college campuses around the U.S. that have smoke free policies that affect the entire campus. On these campuses smoking is banned indoors, in dorm rooms, in student facilities as well as throughout the campus. Once a college campus becomes a smoke-free campus the air becomes cleaner, and the campus itself becomes cleaner since there are not any cigarette butts lying around.
This idea may seem terrible for people who do smoke, but this can also be seen as a great opportunity for smokers to quit. A big issue that people face when deciding to quit is that there is not a support group available to help them quit, but there are programs aimed at supporting college students who decide to stop smoking. The American Cancer Society encourages campus directors to give out items such as gum and support information to people who are interested in quitting. This type of information lets students know that the faculty members as well as other students are there to support them, and that they are not alone when deciding to quit.
The reality of the situation is that prohibiting smoking on campus altogether might be a hard first step. In order to make the transition a bit easier, the campus should first designate areas where students are allowed to smoke. These areas would be away from entrances to buildings and away from any areas where people usually walk or gather. There would only be a few designated areas for smoking on campus, making it harder for smokers to get to one, thus convincing them to start thinking about quitting. The Daily Lobo did a survey on this issue and 42% of students thought there should be designated areas for smoking on campus, so that people who want to avoid those areas are able to.
I think that once UNM starts designating specific areas for smoking, it will become easier to stop smoking on campus altogether from that point. The majority of UNM’s student population seems to agree on this issue, but the question is, how can we get this movement started?
Smoking is a heated topic on campus. Thank you for weighing in, and I'm sure we'll have response blogs and comments in the future! But, I just want to bring up one point that often gets overlooked when talking about a smoke-free campus. That is, the residence halls. For students living in the dorms, is a smoke-free policy mandating that they quit smoking or move off campus? Being an RA in the dorms, I see this as discouraging potential residents from living in the dorms. Let's remember that to students living on campus, UNM is more than a place to go to school. It's home, and do we really want to ban smoking in our home???
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point that I didn't consider in my argument. I can see how banning smoking would discourage students to live on campus. There are probably many other reasons not to ban smoking altogether. Which is why there should be designated areas for people to smoke, which I think a lot of people can live with.
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