By next Thanksgiving, it will be cold turkey
University at Buffalo plans campus-wide smoking ban
The time is coming when smokers at the University at Buffalo won’t have to step outside and huddle in the cold or wind or snow to light up.
That’s because they won’t be able to smoke anywhere on campus — inside or outside.
“No way,” said Austin Lee, a UB junior, who was having a smoke outside Thursday. “There should be a few designated places.”
Nope.
UB officials Thursday announced that smoking will be prohibited from all university buildings and grounds — including parking lots and green spaces — starting next fall.
“Not good,” said smoker David Oh, a UB sophomore. “Not good.”
UB’s announcement was just one initiative announced Thursday in conjunction with the American Cancer Society’s annual Great American Smokeout.
Sisters Hospital, for example, announced its campus will go completely smoke-free, too — the 15th hospital in the region to adopt such a policy.
The Erie-Niagara Tobacco Free Coalition also announced a program that picks up part of the advertising costs for property managers with smoke-free apartment units.
“We are hoping those that smoke will use the new policy as an opportunity to try to stop smoking,” said Peter U. Bergmann, president of Sisters Hospital.
UB — which has more than 42,000 students, staff and faculty spread across more than 1,300 acres — is part of a growing number of college campuses going smoke-free.
About 160 colleges and universities have gone smoke-free, according to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation.
Locally, D’Youville College went smoke-free in 2003.
“Smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, and there is no safe level of secondhand smoke,” said David L. Dunn, vice president for health services at UB. “If you can smell smoke, you are breathing in cancer-causing chemicals.
Like everywhere else, UB has prohibited smoking in its buildings for years, forcing smokers to take it outside.
But a UB committee has been looking at the idea of a smoke-free campus for almost two years, according to committee co-chairmen Dr. Helen Cappuccino, a clinical assistant professor of surgery at UB, and Gary Giovino, acting chairman in UB’s department of health behavior.
And just like at Sisters, the UB policy is meant to discourage smoking.
In fact, counseling services and free nicotine patches and gum were made available to smokers around campus Thursday.
UB hasn’t quite figured out yet how it will enforce the policy come next fall.
“We want to help people quit,” Cappuccino said. “It’s not meant to be punitive.”
Oh, the UB sophomore, didn’t think it was going to stop smokers from lighting up on campus or help them quit — at least not him.
But Aaron Park, who was talking with Lee and Oh as they puffed on cigarettes outside, liked the new smoking policy.
“It’s good for me,” said Park, a senior. “I’m not a smoker.”
Steve Imerese, on the other hand, has been smoking for 15 years and was not happy about the development.
“I think it’s a wee bit ridiculous. At least designate a couple areas,” said Imerese, who was smoking outside the UB Commons, where he works. “What do I have to do to have a cigarette?”
But when asked if the smoke-free policy would help him quit, Imerese said it might.
“It definitely might,” said Imerese, from Kenmore.
His girlfriend has been after him to quit, anyway. And he is paying close to $7 a pack now.
“This,” Imerese said, “might be the nail in the coffin that finally makes me quit.”
