Patricia Woods: It's time to make all B.C. colleges and universities smoke-free
OPINION: Why are there so few B.C. post-secondary campuses with 100-per-cent smoke-free policies?
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Media headlines alert us almost daily to the opioid epidemic in B.C. and rightly so. The statistics are alarming. In 2018, 1,514 people died due to an opioid overdose and the issue has been declared a public health emergency.
Yet there is another epidemic that causes the deaths of more than 6,000 British Columbians every year — four times as many deaths as those due to opioids. It’s legal, insidious and exists hidden in plain sight on virtually all of our post-secondary campuses. The difference between the epidemics is that opioid overdoses kill quickly while the other epidemic is killing them slowly.
Are you concerned? You should be. Recent research from the University of Waterloo shows that this hidden epidemic — smoking and vaping rates among young people — has increased alarmingly. The Canadian Lung Association has called for immediate action, which should include comprehensive smoke-free campus policies to align with provincial, national and global strategies. These policies will help to prevent young people from starting or continuing to smoke, protect everyone from second-hand smoke and help the environment by preventing fires and cigarette butt litter.
So why, then, are there only two B.C. campuses, Douglas College and Langara College (see editor’s note below), with 100-per-cent smoke-free policies that explicitly prohibit the use of cannabis, tobacco (including smokeless tobacco), hookah and vaping anywhere on campus?
There are no good reasons to continue to allow smoking on campuses and plenty of reasons not to. Although there is an abundance of evidence about the benefits, there seems to be some reluctance for campuses to become smoke-free.
Why? What is driving the lack of action on this policy decision?
One reason may be outdated opinions among campus administrators. One administrator laughed when asked to revise the campus policy on smoking, saying, “What next? Are we going to ban selling doughnuts on campus because they are bad for you?” Well, yes, we would. If eating doughnuts killed 50 per cent of all doughnut eaters, it would make sense to prevent people eating them on campus.
Some campus administrators may also believe that becoming smoke-free will negatively affect domestic and international enrolment rates, despite there being absolutely no research or anecdotal evidence to support this idea.
Another reason lies in the land of misconceptions. One misconception is that we need to provide places to smoke on campus because smoking is an addiction. Most young people who smoke say that they would rather not due to the significant health consequences and financial costs.
A smoking habit soon becomes an addiction. Many smokers will try to quit multiple times, often unsuccessfully, over their lifetimes. The 2014 U.S. Surgeon’s General report says that 75 per cent of high-school smokers will become adult smokers, even if they intend to quit in a few years.
An important point, though, is that people who smoke are addicted to nicotine, not to cigarettes. Nicotine can readily be accessed at any pharmacy through nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), including gum, lozenges, inhalers and patches. In B.C., there is no cost to the smoker for NRT or for prescription smoking cessation medications for up to 12 weeks each year. If a pack-a-day smoker replaced their cigarettes with NRT for 12 weeks, the savings would be almost $1,000 — quite a windfall.
Another misconception is that designated smoking areas, which are usually open outdoor structures, are useful and effective. Nothing could be further from the reality. Anyone walking by a smoking area is exposed to wafts of secondhand smoke. There is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke, which will cause the deaths of 1,000 people in B.C. this year.
Another problem is that the sight of people smoking and the smell of smoke act as triggers for former smokers and for those trying hard to quit. Sharing smoking areas is also an issue as tobacco smokers do not want to share the space with cannabis smokers — and people who vape don’t want to inhale any type of smoke at all.
Environmentally, the cigarette butts that end up scattered around smoking areas contain toxins and increase fire risk. Ongoing costs associated with smoking areas include building and maintenance of the structures and ongoing cleanup of cigarette-butt litter. This is not the most responsible use of public education funds as clearly smoking areas don’t work for anybody. These relics from a previous era, when we didn’t know as much as we do now, need to leave our campuses.
Continuing to allow smoking on campuses isn’t being kind to people who smoke, it is simply killing them slowly, as well as increasing exposure to second-hand smoke, harming the environment and using public education funds inappropriately. This needs to change.
Smoke free policies on campuses make good sense. They save lives, are cost effective and support the planet. We need to make everyone aware of this hidden epidemic and ensure healthy campus communities by implementing comprehensive smoke-free policies across all B.C. campuses. Now would be a good time to do so.
Patricia Woods is a PhD candidate in the school of nursing at the University of Victoria.
Editor’s note: The author cites two campuses that are smoke-free, Douglas and Langara. However, both Kwantlen Polytechnic University, with campuses in Richmond, Surrey and Langley, and the University of the Fraser Valley, with campuses in Abbotsford, Chilliwack, Mission and Hope, have been smoke-free since 2018.
Letters to the editor should be sent to sunletters@vancouversun.com. The editorial pages editor is Gordon Clark, who can be reached at gclark@postmedia.com.
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