The Student News Site of Sacramento City College

The Express

The Student News Site of Sacramento City College

The Express

The Student News Site of Sacramento City College

The Express

Opinion: Let’s reconsider the smoking ban

Image taken from http://www.cigarettesflavours.com/quit-smoking/stop-smoking-on-campuses/.
Image taken from http://www.cigarettesflavours.com/quit-smoking/stop-smoking-on-campuses/.
Image taken from http://www.cigarettesflavours.com/quit-smoking/stop-smoking-on-campuses/.
Image taken from http://www.cigarettesflavours.com/quit-smoking/stop-smoking-on-campuses/.

The topic of banning smoking is on fire and has spread quickly to college campuses throughout California. City College is one of the latest colleges to institute its own smoking ban, which will take effect in August.  

I believe that City College needs to reconsider the impending smoking ban in favor of keeping the six Designated Smoking Areas open on campus, located behind buildings, next to parking lots and in front of the Performing Arts Center.  

Non-smokers have the right to breathe smoke-free air, and designated smoking areas allow them to breathe in a greatly reduced secondhand smoke environment. But smokers also have the right to smoke, and they should be able to do that in restricted areas.

Designated smoking areas are meant to limit secondhand smoke exposure by non-smokers and to limit the number of cigarettes consumed by smokers, according to The New York Journal of Student Affairs. DSAs have worked well here for almost two years.

But the district has been steadily moving toward banning smoking on campuses for some time. Both City College and American River College surveyed students, faculty and staff in 2014 and 2015, respectively, about instituting smoke and tobacco-free campuses.

On both campuses about 70 percent of respondents indicated they support a nonsmoking campus, but only about 13 percent of each campus population responded. That doesn’t represent a sizable chunk of the students, faculty, staff and administrators.

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The DSAs were created, according to the SCC Safety Subcommittee Report on Designated Smoking Areas, to “promote healthy choices for our students and staff, protect nonsmokers from exposure to secondhand smoke [and] respect the rights of both the smoker and non-smoker.”

I believe that DSAs continue to be a common sense solution to dealing with the issue. The smoking ban will force many student smokers and City College employees to leave campus, which will take a lot of time out of their day.

It is unreasonable to expect all student and employee smokers to quit, so they will continue to smoke when the smoking ban takes effect. There will likely be some people sneaking around, looking for places to smoke.

The California state universities and community colleges have the freedom to implement their own smoking policies, and six of the 23 CSU campuses currently have smoking bans in place. But on recent visits to Sac State, which declares on its website that it is a smoke-free campus, I have seen people smoking behind buildings. I believe that smoking bans are nearly impossible to enforce.

Colleges and other public spaces make accommodations for all kinds of people with special needs, and I believe for smokers it should be no different, since smoking can be viewed as a special need.

Though I am a nonsmoker, I do not want to see anyone denied their rights or freedom, so I support Designated Smoking Areas on campus. Let’s keep the DSAs open for use.   

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