Friday, July 30, 2010
Health The smoking light is unlit
Posted by Max Brantley on Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 1:42 PM
I'd forgotten this. An all-campus ban on smoking on all state university campuses takes effect Sunday.
Old fogey sidetrip. In my college days, cigarettes were 23 cents a pack in Virginia (free book of matches included). We smoked them — Luckies and Marlboros — in the classroom. In the dining hall. At football games. In the student coffeeshop. All night at the card table. In dorm rooms. In taverns. In restaurants. I think even in the library, though I rarely darkened those doors.
Glad that's over.
Comments (12)
Showing 1-12 of 12
Back when you and me were in college to have banned smoking would have been unAmerican. I recall back in 89 when the Presbyterian church in Fayetteville said no more smoking in the fellowship hall. So, I joined the minister, a couple of lawyers and one Md and smoked in the minister's office.
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Sounds like our local DJ Tommy Smith used to say about Cabot, "that's where you have to tell your 14 year old daughter it ain't proper for her to be smoking in front of her kids in church!"
In the old days at the U of A Max you would pick up a little tin ashtray at the front desk and then return it on your way out.
Do they force Freshman to live on campus in Fayetteville?
Will there be smoking areas at all?
Just checking....
I don't smoke, but I also do not see why smokers are treated like evil, dirty (non-taxpaying) people since the air you breath everyday is worse for you then walking past a "smoking area" on campus.
>>Didn't drop dead did you from smoking.<<
Not yet but I'm clearly on the path, perhaps a year to two till the incinerator gets me.
While we're on absurdities you do know that 100% of all smokers will die?
My first wife didn’t drop dead from smoking. Instead, she withered away with emphysema, finally dying with a gangrenous pancreas.
>>since the air you breath everyday is worse for you then walking past a "smoking area" on campus.<<
Mouse, you will need to back that up with something. Otherwise, you're blowing smoke.
The air in our house is mucho healthier than in the house next door with two smokers. Both smoking neighbors have COPD and are under 50. One of their children is getting asthma to boot. Sad.
The dorm kids have to go across the street to non-campus. A bunch of them at the UA smoke over by Leverett Elementary School. Technically, the street right of ways are not campus property, so they could smoke on the edge of the street or on the sidewalk on the campus side, but I've heard threats of arresting anybody doing that for loitering. The administration is also looking at stopping smoking in cars on campus streets and parking lots.
I repeat: it's not the smokers, it is the smoke that is unwelcome.
It's too hot to get very involved here. This is copied from the Arkansas Cancer Coalition newsletter: "This measure is important because 18 to 24 year olds, college age youth, are a special target for tobacco industry marketing. It also gives legislative emphasis for the U.S. Surgeon General’s warning that there is no safe exposure to secondhand smoke. While the law does not provide for comprehensive tobacco free campuses, it is a significant first step. "
If a young person can make it until 25 without acquiring a nicotine addiction the odds are that they will not. This is a great new law that may save more lives than any public health efforts in a long while. The interest now should be how to reduce initiation for those of this age group who are less educated and more likely to start than their peers who attend college.
Whos - the U of A was smoke free last year so this is nothing new to the kids. I kind of chuckle when I think of the campus Barney Fifes trying to chase down students in parking lots to write them a citation.
Is it "Just My Imagination," or was there a smoking area -- maybe on the South side of the building at Little Rock Central in the mid-70s? Up the street from Campus Inn? Don't know why you'd have a smoking area at a high school. Maybe I'm just mixed up.
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