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UNM Struggling with Campus Smoking Ordinance
By Jamie Garcia, UNM CJ 375 student, March 2011

A year and a half after the University of New Mexico implemented a campus-wide smoking ban, clouds of smoke still hover over the campus.

The plan to prohibit smoking and tobacco use on the UNM campus was initially proposed in order to promote wellness, prevention and an overall healthier campus atmosphere. According to the university’s Tobacco-Free Campus Policies and Procedures Manual, “smoking and the use of tobacco products are prohibited on all university property except in a small number of outdoor areas authorized by the university president.” The policy prohibits cigarettes, cigars, pipes, smokeless tobacco, hookahs, electronic and clove cigarettes, and all other tobacco products. In addition, the policy extends to prohibit smoking in vehicles, parking lots and parking garages on campus.

Although these rules have been established, efforts to enforce the smoking ban have fallen short. As outlined in the policy, it is the responsibility of the students, faculty and staff to politely encourage any smokers they see to put out their cigarettes or move to a designated smoking area. This is one aspect of the plan many students find troubling.

Carolyn Herrera, a senior and non-smoker at UNM, said she does not feel comfortable approaching students who may be smoking outside of designated areas.

“It’s really awkward to go to up random people you’ve never met and act like you have authority over them. You run the risk of offending that person and you never know how they might react,” Herrera said. “I don’t need to deal with confrontation at school. If I’m that bothered by the smoke, I’ll just walk away.”

Besides avoiding confrontation, other students are more apathetic to the situation. Kelly Catanach, a junior and smoker at UNM, said had she not noticed people congregating in certain areas to smoke, she would have never known about the ban.

“I don’t pay attention to UNM news for the most part. I heard people talking about the possibility of a ban a year or so ago, but I never heard anything else about it,” Catanach said. “I still smoke wherever I want, and no one ever tells me anything. If someone ever does, I’ll probably just walk away and smoke somewhere else. This isn’t high school — I’m not going to get detention.”

Because many UNM students seem indifferent when it comes to smokers on campus and aren’t doing much to enforce the ban, has it made any significant impact? Students and staff interested in quitting smoking have many resources — such as counseling, free nicotine patches and help formulating a quit-plan — available to them courtesy of UNM Hospital and the Student Health Center, but they are not highly promoted like they were when ban was implemented. With this in mind, has UNM failed to follow through with its initial goal of a healthier overall campus?

Pug Burge, associate vice president for administration at UNM Health Sciences Center, was asked to lead the efforts for a smoke-free policy on campus by UNM President David J. Schmidly in the summer of 2008. With the policy now in place, she said she also feels the lack of enforcement on campus.

“We didn’t expect a change overnight,” Burge said. “And it is hard because we have no way to enforce the policy. Students and employees are still smoking all over campus and there is really nothing we can do about it. People are supposed to be on the honor system. However, we realized that a number of students live on campus and therefore decided to designate certain areas in order to compromise with the campus community.”

Burge said initially, the HSC wanted UNM campus police to enforce the policy by issuing citations to smokers, but this plan was quickly dismissed.

“We planned for UNMPD to walk around campus in regular clothes and issue citations to students in violation of the policy — we thought this would get the message across. We later learned that New Mexico state law prohibits the issue of fines for smoking on public grounds and had to drop the idea,” Burge said.

Burge said despite the lack of current enforcement, efforts to stop smoking on campus will continue. She is assigned to work on a memorial — an act, which makes a request of or expresses an opinion in the state legislature — which she hopes will eventually make all public universities in the state smoke-free.

“Iowa and Arkansas have both implemented state laws requiring all public university campuses to be smoke-free, and Nevada has one in the works,” Burge said. “I hope that one day New Mexico will be on this list.”