By At Cal State Fullerton, smoking isn’t only frowned upon. It’s banned.
CSUF made headlines last month by becoming the first Cal State University campus to prohibit smoking, according to the Daily Titan.
The initiative, also known as the President’s Directive No. 18, defines smoking as “inhaling, exhaling, burning, or carrying a lighted cigarette, cigar, pipe or other lighted smoking product, including electronic cigarettes.”
CSUF is the first CSU campus to officially ban smoking, and many others universities may soon follow CSUF’s lead.
Earlier this year, CSU Chancellor Timothy P. White announced his intention to implement a 23-campus smoking ban.
In addition, Cal State Long Beach students voted to ban smoking on campus in April during the Associated Students, Inc. election.
Currently, the referendum is waiting to be signed by interim President Donald Para.
It seems that anti-smoking campaigns in the CSU have grown considerably in the past few months.
While a majority of us support smoking restrictions, we do not believe the CSUF model will reduce the number of smokers.
Shane Newell, opinions editor, discussed the ban on Daily 49er's weekly radio show.
The main concern we have with the CSUF model is the lack of penalties associated with the act of smoking.
Even though CSUF bans all forms of smoking, the exact punishment for violating the university’s policy was not explicitly stated in the initiative.
For a ban to be effective, we believe there should be clearly-defined penalties, such as warnings or fines.
In addition, a ban can be effective only if there are number of administrators or employees who are dedicated to enforcing the ban.
CSUF’s smoking ban did not even mention if enforcement of the new policy would be increased.
We are also surprised that the ban includes e-cigarettes.
As many know, e-cigarettes are electronic cigarettes that do not produce real smoke.
Why should they banned?
The CSUF smoking ban needs to be revised if it’s to be completely fair to those who don’t smoke cigarettes.
Instead of banning the act of smoking, we believe CSUF should instead enforce the ban on certain areas of campus and leave marked areas for smokers to use freely.
With the way it is now, President’s Directive No. 18 seems like nothing more than a feeble attempt to curb a pesky habit.
For true change to occur, CSUF will have to do more than outline a ban.
