It's been a long time (i.e., more than a month) since my last post. Between work, travel, and now a nasty cold, it's been difficult to catch up with my blog. So--here's what I've got for the month of October and late September:- Today, I want to start off with a briefing about fires--building fires--but even more specifically, building fires caused by improperly extinguished cigarettes. Although these occur all too often (cigarettes are the leading cause of building fires), this instance in Potsdam, NY brought the issue to my attention. Fortunately, nobody was killed by this act of sheer carelessness and stupidity, but six people were left homeless and two firefighters were injured--all because of someone's disgusting habit that was not prohibited by their landlord. I'll let a quote from the op-ed segue me into my next point:
"Landlords have a legal right to adopt smoke-free policies for their properties, just as they can adopt a no-pet policy. It is not discriminatory to do so. In fact, perhaps the most responsible action that a landlord of a multiunit dwelling can take is to adopt smoke-free policies for the entire building. Tenants paying rent should not have to be exposed to deadly secondhand smoke and if you reside in a multiunit dwelling there is no way of escaping it, as cigarette smoke, filled with cancer-causing chemicals travels throughout the entire structure."
- More news from New York: Scientists at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo conducted an air quality study of 30 apartments between 11 different apartment buildings. They concluded that people who live in apartment buildings are "particularly susceptible to secondhand smoke exposure in their homes." No surprise there. However, they offered a recommendation for apartment complexes to create smoking-free zones. I am unclear as to whether they recommended entirely smoke-free apartment complexes (which are popping up), or smoke-free zones within apartment complexes. Either way, I want to make it clear that I am not an advocate of private smoking bans, as I mentioned in a post this past May. Apartment complexes sure seem to blur the line between public and private, though. On that note, my exceptionally short, yet very telling, quote of the month:
"Buildings are designed to breathe." --Rita Turner, Deputy Director, Center for Tobacco Regulation, Litigation and Advocacy, University of Maryland Law School
- My own (non-scientific) research tells me that there is a fairly strong correlation between universities that have highly successful football teams and have/will soon have, smoke-free campuses. As of Week 9 in NCAA Football, the #1-ranked team is the University of Oregon. The UO student body president, Amelie Rouss
eau, is pushing for a campus smoking ban, for which there is a 75% approval rate among students. Go Ducks. #2 Boise State University went smoke-free last fall, but apparently has experienced enforcement issues. Still, go Broncos. Skipping down the list to #6 Alabama, there seems to be a debate going on over establishing designated smoking areas; this is a good sign for the future--Go Crimson Tide. #7 Missouri will be smoke-free by January 1, 2014. Go Mizzou. #9 Wisconsin does not yet have a smoke-free policy on its main campus in Madison, but two other UW campuses are already smoke-free, Stout & Baraboo/Sauk County. The same can be said about #17 South Carolina, #20 Oklahoma State, and Texas, whose sister campuses, USC-Upstate, OSU-Oklahoma City, OSU-Tulsa, UT-Arlington, and UT-Brownsville are all smoke-free. Go Badgers, Gamecocks, Cowboys, and Longhorns. However, #18 Iowa and #19 Arkansas are entirely smoke-free universities. Go Hawkeyes and Razorbacks! The medical campuses of both #13 Stanford and #22 Miami are entirely smoke-free, and Miami has even implemented a $50 tax on student-smokers. I will not give a shout-out to Stanford, as they are my archrival school--so, go Hurricanes. The sister school of Nevada (Reno, who almost made the top 25 this week), Nevada-Las Vegas just received a $500,000 federal grant from the Centers for Disease Control, which will ultimately make UNLV a tobacco-free campus by spring 2012. Florida, also a top-program, just went smoke-free this past summer (see my thoughts about it), so the Gators have something to cheer about in Tim Tebow's absence. Michigan, another historic football powerhouse, is officially going smoke-free next year. Georgia may soon follow suit. Other notable football schools that are already smoke-free: Mississippi (Ole Miss), Brigham Young University, Notre Dame, and Kentucky...Okay, I lied: Kentucky is a basketball school. Nevertheless, the moral of the story may be (key word being "may") that if you want to increase your school's chances of winning football games, you might want to consider advocating for a smoke-free campus (:::cough, cough, Cal, cough, cough, Arizona State:::). Makes some sense, right? Check out the list of nearly 450 smoke-free US colleges at www.no-smoke.org.
- Cambridge, Massachusetts, home to Harvard University--a school not known for their football program, may soon ban smoking in city parks. Marjorie Decker, who proposed the plan, said,
"I think anyone who is in a publicly funded space like a park should have a reasonable level of confidence that they are in a toxic-free zone." --Marjorie Decker, Cambridge City Council.
Marjorie, you're preaching to the choir, but I hope the congregation can hear you! To add to the New England area controversy, nearby New Hampshire may soon be banning smoking on beaches and parks. Meanwhile, on the west coast, the city of Long Beach (Los Angeles area) has banned smoking in local parks, sports fields and hiking trails.
- International smoke-free news: Just when Finland's government takes matters into their own hands by commencing a progression of legislation (see video) aimed to end smoking, the Russian government proposes that its country, where 80% of the male population smokes, will be essentially smoke-free by 2015. Quite the bold move, I'll say. Oh, and let's not forget about Florida International University, yet another US educational institution that has passed a smoke-free policy. There are simply too many colleges that are banning smoking for me to provide interesting context for--but that is a very, very good thing.
