Digest #27: The 2012 Mega-Digest

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IS GOING SMOKE-FREE!

If you know me at all, or have at least followed my blog, you could have predicted the excitement that I felt in typing the above headline. My lofty goal for the last two semesters of my undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley was to convince campus administration to pass a smoke-free policy, and although I can hardly claim any credit for the recent news, I am incredibly proud to say that not only will UC Berkeley be going smoke-free within the next two years, but UCLA, UC Davis, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, and UC Merced will also be joining the ranks of the 600+ college campuses around the nation that have (or will soon have) smoke-free policies.

I first heard about the news from an email chain originating from a fellow UC Berkeley public health advocate, who attached a letter from University of California President Mark Yudof that called upon each campus chancellor to assemble a campus task force to determine the best way to go about implementing and enforcing a tobacco-free policy (more on this below). I then notified my friends at The Daily Californian of the news, and they managed to find a link to the actual policy proposal that was submitted to Yudof on October 25.

The proposal is actually very simple: It’s broken out into three sections, not including references and appendices. Section 1 summarizes the scientific rationale for policy change, current smoking policies at each of the UC campuses, case studies of other campuses, and support for a smoke-free policy. At the end of Section 1, the authors stealthily indicate that all tobacco products should be banned on each campus:

“The University of California has the potential to be a leader in implementing a system-wide smoke-free policy. We respectfully recommend the University of California become a smoke-free university system. We further recommend this policy eliminate smoking of tobacco products and unregulated nicotine devices (e-cigarettes); use of smokeless tobacco products; and prohibit the advertising and sale of tobacco products on any UC property.” – The Smoking Policy Subcommittee of the Occupational Wellness Forum, University of California

Personally, I don’t feel strongly about banning tobacco products in addition to cigarettes and other smoking products. As I’ve said time and time again, secondhand smoke is what really gets me; smoking products emit secondhand smoke, while smokeless products clearly do not. However, this is not to say that I do not support the all-out tobacco ban, as I think it does make sense to tackle the tobacco issue all at once and leave it in the past. As the top public university system in the nation, we must be leaders in promoting students’ and campus patrons’ health—even if that means overriding law that otherwise permits freedom of choice in using tobacco products that are well-known to foster unhealthy—and often deadly—habits.

Section 2 of the policy proposal goes on to make recommendations for addressing enforcement and student safety, as well as recommendations for an implementation plan, a timeline, and costs. Finally, Section 3 provides example policy language. I think that the inclusion of these recommendations was both strategic and critical in making the proposal comprehensive because the recommendations illustrate how campus administration could potentially address each sub-issue, rather than leaving everything up to them to start from scratch. In other words, the recommendations made for an easier decision to go tobacco-free.

I will be following the progress of the University of California—of UC Berkeley, in particular—over the next several months. Stay tuned.

Smoke-free versus Smoker-free Workplaces

I have previously endorsed measures taken by hospital systems that identify and filter out smokers in their job applicant pools, on the basis that it is both a dangerous and hypocritical practice to allow traces of secondhand and thirdhand smoke anywhere near ill patients. However, thanks to two prominent leaders in tobacco control, I would like to share how my opinion has been challenged.

This past Friday, I had the distinct privilege of listening to two American Legacy Foundation executives, Dr. Cheryl Healton – President & CEO, and Ellen Vargyas – General Counsel, speak about the Master Settlement Agreement (which gave rise to the organization), and their decade-long battle against Big Tobacco. Dr. Healton spoke to a group of eleven newly-selected Youth Activism Fellows, including myself, about how tobacco control is truly an issue of social justice. Although I was aware that people in lower socioeconomic classes are more likely to take up smoking, I previously did not recognize how aggressively the tobacco industry targets these groups in its advertising. Ms. Vargyas’ presentation touched on some of the same issues, but it was this except of her recent article published on Drugfree.org that made me realize how my previous stance was too harsh:

“Smoker free workplace policies disproportionately burden people at lower income and education levels. These days, smoking rates are highest among adults with incomes below the poverty level and among those with a GED diploma or a 9th to 11th grade education. Rates are lowest for adults with graduate degrees. Most of the ad men in “Mad Men” aren’t smoking anymore and haven’t for years. When a hospital decides that it won’t hire smokers, the most likely person to lose out is the orderly or nurse’s aide or janitor. It’s very unlikely to be the highly paid administrator or surgeon– even leaving aside the fact that doctors are typically not even hospital employees and wouldn’t be subject to these policies in the first place.” – Ellen Vargyas – General Counsel, American Legacy Foundation

…How can I argue with that? Nevertheless, given the growing body of evidence demonstrating the harms of thirdhand smoke, I can’t help but hold on to my conviction that hospital administrators should do everything they can to mitigate any and all exposure to environmental tobacco smoke. However, with regard to all workplaces other than hospitals (and perhaps schools), I certainly agree with Ms. Vargyas’ point that employers should be providing smoking cessation resources and enacting smoke-free workplaces, rather than denying jobs to smokers altogether.

You may be asking yourself, “But how does this affect his argument about discrimination against smokers?” …I still don’t think this is logically possible. Smoking is still technically a choice, and historically, the term ‘discrimination’ has been used in contexts in which the discriminators have acted unreasonably and without scientific evidence of two groups’ inherent differences—differences that perhaps make one group more dangerous than the other. In this case, our society “discriminates” (for lack of a better word) against people who use a product, the emissions of which we can conclusively say are dangerous to others in close proximity to the user—even after the product has been used. A circumstance like a hospital smoker-free workplace isn’t an instance of discrimination, but rather an educated quarantine.

Other News:

• Emory University, a top private university in Georgia, has just implemented a tobacco-free policy that not only bans tobacco use on campus, but also bans smoking in cars parked on campus. This is the first car-specific smoking ban I’ve heard of, and I’d like to see more of these, especially on public roads.
• The smoking and tobacco ban at the two University of Arizona Medical Center campuses (effective January 1) seems to have spurred more talk of a university-wide smoking ban. Coincidentally, I have targeted the U of A, as well as Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University as smoke-free campus candidates, and I plan to work with campus leaders in the coming months to help them get ahead of the curve. More on that to come…
• As of March 1, Chicago’s seven city colleges, which collectively enroll over 120,000 students, will be tobacco-free. Prior to conducting an official vote on the measure, the school system surveyed students, faculty and staff, finding that 85% of respondents supported a tobacco-free policy.
• An expansion of the Indianapolis smoking ban has advanced to a full city council vote that will take place on January 30, which, if approved, may not leave enough time to implement the ban in the bars, bowling alleys and hotels that would be affected before the city hosts Super Bowl XLVI. Meanwhile, a larger-scale statewide ban is making similar progress.
• The capital city of Texas, Austin, officially has a smoking ban in effect for its parks, preserves and pools.
• There is hope for Kentucky, the state with the highest smoking prevalence (at 29%): 54% of respondents to a recent poll indicated that they would favor a statewide smoking ban. If Kentucky could somehow pull this off relatively quickly, other state legislatures won't have much of an excuse for dragging their feet.
• A beach city in Florida has considered issuing fines of up to $500 for leaving a cigarette butt in the beach sand. Not only do I think this would be a deterrent to butt littering, but I think it would also be a deterrent to smoking, in general. I get the impression that many frequent smokers are so accustomed to littering elsewhere, that if they are warned about such a hefty fine, some wouldn’t even trust themselves to not make a mistake in disposing a butt on the beach. Overall, it’s a very intriguing approach.
• New York City is sporting some recent findings that the average life expectancy of its residents has risen to 80.6 years, or 2.4 years above the national average. The attributed cause (or strong correlation)? Smoke-free policies. No surprise there! Meanwhile, The New York Times ran an article about the widespread increase in smoke-free public housing, which--despite the complaints voiced in the article--suggests that NYC may be heading in that direction.
• Following the example recently set by Carnival and Norwegian cruise lines, Princess Cruises has banned smoking from all staterooms and stateroom balconies, leaving a cigar lounge, a handful of indoor areas, and open decks as the only areas where people can smoke on the ships. However, e-cigarette use is still permitted in staterooms. Holland America has also banned smoking in all staterooms.
• Because the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act did not include cigar regulation, a group of Democratic senators is hoping to get the Food & Drug Administration to extend the existing ban on cigarettes with "candy-like flavoring" to cigars with similar tastes. Seeing that I have had friends who would smoke these flavored cigars and eventually "graduate" to cigarettes, I feel that this is absolutely necessary, and don't know how this prohibition was excluded from the original 2009 legislation.
• Disturbing news: A New Jersey school bus driver was caught smoking a cigarette in his empty bus.
• A new book entitled, Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition, by Robert Proctor, explores an idea that many of us anti-smoking advocates dream of, but don't necessarily endorse: an international ban on cigarette sales. Peter Singer ponders this in a recent column posted on CNN.com: "As Proctor says, cigarettes, not guns or bombs, are the deadliest artifacts in the history of civilization. If we want to save lives and improve health, nothing else that is readily achievable would be as effective as an international ban on the sale of cigarettes."
• Personal anecdote: A few weeks ago, I was driving home from work when I noticed a smoking cigarette peek out of the driver's side window of the car in front of me--nothing out of the ordinary, right? Then, I noticed the 'Donate Life' bumper sticker on the same car...Wow--if I ever need an organ transplant, I sure hope my match doesn't come from that person.

One final thought: Are e-cigarettes the future of smoking in America? An article in The New York Times does a good job of convincing me that they are—for the most part. Considering how the products cause negligible health effects to the user and no secondhand effects to others, e-cigarettes seem to be the answer. However, many antismoking advocates, like myself, maintain that e-cigarettes can easily be confused with traditional cigarettes and can serve as a sort of ‘gateway’ product to traditional cigarettes, so allowing e-cigarette use in smoke-free areas could be counterproductive. However, if the federal government can, one day, ban traditional cigarette manufacturing (as it currently does with marijuana cigarettes) and effectively replace this market void with e-cigarettes, while enabling tobacco companies (which would only be legally permitted to produce smokeless tobacco products) to earn patent royalties from e-cigarette sales, then this—at least in theory—would solve the secondhand smoke problem. The aggressive advertising practices that tobacco companies conduct to sell their addictive products would still be highly questionable, in my opinion—but this issue is somewhat outside the scope of this blog.