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There is a simple reason why PCC became a smoke-free campus: concern for everyone’s health. Tobacco smoking has been studied for more than a decade and is considered to be one of the leading causes of death. More than 1,000 colleges and universities in the United States regulate smoking, therefore PCC’s ban is not unusual.

Our campus became a 100 percent smoke-free campus on January 1, 2014. There are now no smoking sections and or isolated areas where smoking is permitted. Smokers are now in the middle of the desert and if they want to smoke a cigarette after class, they must get out of PCC’s property altogether to finally puff their cigarette.

To approach a healthier academic environment, imposing a ban on smoking inside campus is a great idea. PCC does not just kick out all smokers, but the school’s health services department also provides the Smoking Cessation program. This refundable class including free nicotine patches and counseling and can be enrolled in by anyone who wants to quit consuming nicotine and tar. Moreover, the program organizes a stop-smoking strategy for each participant.It is enough support for all smokers if they need assistance.

Secondhand smoke is another concern. According to the health services department, secondhand smoke contains more nicotine and tar than smoke inhaled directly from a cigarette and non-smoking people are exposed to these harmful chemicals. That leads to a significant reduction in the function of the lungs and heart, and can eventually cause death. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cigarette smoking is linked to “more than 480,000 deaths annually including deaths from secondhand smoke,” and even secondhand smoke itself accounts for “nearly 42,000 deaths each year.”

These massive numbers of deaths from smoking have pushed an anti-smoking movement and many schools have taken the action that our campus did. The American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation reported that “1,372 100% smoke-free campuses” exist in the United States. As the nationwide smoke-free campus campaign shows, becoming a smoke-free campus can be a key to success for both our college and students themselves.

Quitting cigarettes is a lifetime challenge without any support. Nonetheless, our school provides enormous support programs and an opportunity to prevent smoking. Why not rely on the school’s assistance and accept a “breathe easier” environment.

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2 Replies to “Time to quit smoking at PCC”

  1. A well written article. However the health department didn’t give you all the facts. An unintentional error of omission? “Secondhand smoke contains more nicotine and tar than smoke inhaled directly from a cigarette” by volume. To make a statistical comparison, you need equal volume. Yet, since second hand smoke dissipates, it almost never contains more nicotine and tar than cigarettes.

    Also, secondhand smoke studies primarily pertain to enclosed areas. Studies show there is minimal danger outside; simply put the smoke dissipates. Cars on the road, factories, etc. are more dangerous to you and I.

    PCC should have kept a few smoking areas with ashtrays. Compromise. Instead, using false advertising and misleading polling numbers, PCC banned smoking. Now PCC complains that people smoke and litter on Colorado yet it is because of PCC’s policy, that people (legally) are driven to smoke in front of PCC.

    Surely Administrators with all the problems at PCC have better things to do than worry about a few cigarette smokers on campus? If health is the issue; let’s address obesity on campus. Obesity is far more dangerous to our health than smoking. According to the CDC people with a BMI over 25 are considered overweight. Look around the campus. You decide what is the danger.

  2. Dr. Michael Siegel, Professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University School of Public Health, challenges the evidence for, what he believes to be, the overstated claims that secondhand smoke in an outdoor environment leads to this claim by the Centers for Disease Controls [CDC] “that breathing drifting tobacco smoke for as little as 30 minutes (less than the time one might be exposed outdoors on a beach, sitting on a park bench, listening to a concert in a park, etc.) can raise a nonsmoker’s risk of suffering a fatal heart attack to that of a smoker.”

    Siegel, no fan of the tobacco industry, states emphatically that no evidence exists for this claim, and anti-smoking groups are undermining their cause by this exaggeration.

    Anti-smoking nannies dress up their moral objections over the dangers of secondhand smoke with thread-bare scientific evidence.

    Want evidence that anti-smoking groups object to smoking on moral grounds? Then allow E-cigarettes on campus, where none of the tars, nicotine, and other “nasties” of second-hand smoke are released. But that’s no going to happen, is it?

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