A bill designed to make UH a smoke-free environment was passed by SGA on Jan. 18. The bill requires smokers to stand a minimum of 25 feet away from campus buildings while smoking — the current minimum distance is 15 feet. It also requires ash receptacles to be placed at least 35 feet away from buildings instead of the current 15-foot distance regulation.
It is noble of SGA to try to protect non-smokers from second-hand smoke, but the bill will likely do exactly the opposite. This is because SGA doesn’t seem to understand the layout of our campus.
If you step out of a building and walk 15 feet, you will find yourself between that building and a sidewalk. If you were to walk another 10 feet, you would find yourself standing on a sidewalk. The only thing this bill will do is push smokers onto campus sidewalks. When that happens, more students will be exposed to second-hand smoke.
If the bill was designed simply to keep smokers away from campus buildings, it will be successful. However, if the bill was designed to protect non-smokers from second-hand smoke, it will fail miserably.
While most smokers on campus smoke near buildings, they are often in places that are far away from entrances. .
If SGA truly wanted to protect students from second-hand smoke, they would pass a bill that created designated smoking areas on the sides of buildings. Smokers would be able to smoke out of the way of other students and non-smokers would be able to walk on smoke-free sidewalks.
SGA should have waited to introduce this bill later until later in the semester. By doing this, they could have gotten feedback from smokers and non-smokers alike. Then again, it would have been more difficult for them to pass such a bill if students were aware that it existed. SGA took the easy way out on this one. And, as a result they now have a bill that will do the opposite of what it was intended to do.
Frankly, SGA should have simply banned smoking on campus, period. That would be the most effective method of achieving all of their goals in this bill. The persecution complex of smokers continues to amaze me.
Who is persecuting smokers? "I don't care about your habits, I just don't want you to force me to participate in them." Where is the persecution?
Said the persecutor, who is apparently oblivious to the fact that Houston has some of the worst air-quality issues in the country about which virtually nothing is done. I can’t help but wonder if the same folks concerned about the few passive smoker’s fumes they encounter and find so offensive are doing anything in their life to eliminate the massive carbon footprint which effects them far more dangerously and to which, if they drive a car, they are contributing to a far more lethal degree than my few puffs every could? But hey, what’s a little toxic air pollution, when there are cigarette smokers to kick around?
Yes, we all know how well institutional smoking bans work. I work for a large "non-smoking" institution where the smoking ban has resulted in an "underground" mentality for smokers. They just figure out ways around it. I can hardly wait for the day when smokers are refused admission to UH (employers can already discriminate against them, ) Seems like we're well on our way in the name of non-smokers' rights.
It would only give us a better atmosphere with students who are intelligent enough to respect their own and others' health.
Of course this is a slippery-slope fallacy, but I can at least point out when it doesn't even correspeond to the form of the flaw.