Online Comments
In response to “ASUA Senate votes against tobacco-free campus resolution” (by Stephanie Casanova, Sept. 19:

How do you not vote in favor of this? This is ridiculous, even disregarding the emotional and health aspects of the bill, that these student leaders, who are meant to represent the student body, can disregard the survey. Take in consideration the fact that the survey polled more students than any senator received in votes for their own election for office. The Senate is inexperienced and needs to mature quickly to effectively represent not just the 5 percent of students who elected them, but the student body.

— It’s Going to be a Long year

What I see more is an effort to socially engineer the U of A student, to try to make a cleaner and greener individual instead of letting them promote creativity and individuality. This is the problem in feel-goodism. The ASUA makes laws that don’t really do anything to address student health but alienate certain student groups, in this case smokers. Smoking isn’t healthy, but it’s not the U of A’s job to be policing the autonomy of the students and faculty. One day it’s gun owners, and another day it’s people who don’t recycle, and then it’s people who smoke.

And who’s going to enforce such a resolution? The police? They have better things to do than to enforce laws that, in reality, aren’t supposed to be on their to-do list.

And I think this is extremely inconsistent. We shouldn’t be trying to fight a war on smokers, drugs, guns, women, anything or anybody. Just because smoking is unhealthy doesn’t mean we should be using force to stop smoking. This is just another waste of education dollars that could probably be better spent in the real interests of the student body.This only promotes my conclusion that what rights don’t get infringed off-campus do get infringed upon on campus.

— FedUp

The idea of the initiative is not to force people to quit smoking. It is to keep the secondhand smoke off campus to build a cleaner and healthier environment for the faculty, students and visitors.
For the same reasons hospitals do not allow smoking on their premises or restaurants do not allow smoking inside their establishment or within a certain distance for it. And how hard is it to walk across the street for a cigarette break?

— ?

You obviously don’t understand the inconvenience to walk off campus to smoke a cigarette. I am in accordance with the Senate because although there are way more non-smokers on campus, they are looking out for the other students, like me. Also, about the statistics, how many of the people surveyed were non-smokers? And how many of them were smokers? Just something to think about.

— Done

But to circumvent this “inconvenience to walk off campus to smoke a cigarette,” they would be providing free Nicotine replacement therapy to those who want it. They allow enough time for people to be aware and decide whether they may want to quit or not.

According to the statistics on the UA Campus Health Website, 79 percent of students do not use tobacco. So the 70 percent statistic of students who support the tobacco-free policy is very representative of the student population here.

— Not Done

How many were smokers and how many were not that were surveyed? If the majority were non-smokers than, obviously, the statistics have a bias.

— Fed up with fed up

It seems like you are asking for a 44,000 sample survey, if you want an absolutely unbiased sample. That is not feasible and is not done even in published research. That’s why we have randomization for samples, because it’s not possible to get an answer from an entire population.

— Kevin