UW-Milwaukee Smoking Ban on Campus in the Works

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The UW-Milwaukee Physical Environment Committee will be forming a sub-committee to update the campus smoking policy to fully ban smoking on campus property, according to David Heathcote, chair of the Physical Environment Committee.

David Heathcote speaks to the Senate Faculty.

“The Student Association has really been the driving force behind the smoking ban,” said UWM Chancellor Mark Mone.

 

On Nov. 19, 2017, the Student Association Senate voted in support of legislation that bans tobacco use on campus.

“SA would like to see a tobacco free campus policy take effect by Sept. 4, 2018,” the legislation says. “[SA] recommends UWM form an ad-hoc working committee (…) to determine the feasibility, reach, and details of the policy.”

Other Wisconsin schools such as Marquette, UW-Stout, UW-Eau Claire, UW-Stevens Point, and MATC have enacted smoking bans on campus. UW-Milwaukee would be the second largest school (by enrollment) in Wisconsin to enact a smoking ban.

Chancellor Mone watches as David Heathcote presents.

In line with Wisconsin state law, UWM already does not allow smoking in any university building. The current policy also prohibits smoking within 25 feet of all building.

Riley Ancil, former Helen Bader School of Social Welfare SA senator, says that this idea started as a smoking ban to prevent second-hand smoke but moved into a tobacco free movement.

“We have applied for grants to become a tobacco-free campus, and I think it puts our campus ahead of others in regard to promoting overall health and well-being of our students,” Ancil said.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention website, “cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure.”

The number of cigarette related deaths in the United States is equivalent to about 1,300 people dying everyday, according to the CDC website.

“Ethically, it’s not even a gray area,” says UWM student and self-identified smoker Ted Sanders. “From the standpoint of rights, it makes no sense, seeing as it is an autonomous choice I make, that doesn’t really infringe on the rights or needs of others.”

Ancil says that there are many places right off campus that tobacco products could still be used.

This update in policy would not affect city property such as surrounding sidewalks.

In the most recent UWM Physical Environment Committee meeting minutes (Feb. 21,) it is said that, “legal is still reviewing the revised [smoking] policy.”

It is not clear how this policy will be enforced, but this is something that SA and the P.E.C. say they will work on in this sub-committee.

“It’s like you don’t speed because it’s the law,” Heathcote said during the faculty senate meeting, “bad analogy.”