Editor,
Last semester I wrote a letter to the Daily Lobo to protest the placement of Smokers Station ash receptacles not five feet from entrances to many of the dormitories.
I am writing now to elaborate on what I believe is a needed change in the smoking policy for the residential area of campus that includes the residence halls, La Posada and the Student Residence Center front desk. Throughout the entire campus, smoking is permitted out of doors and a reasonable distance from entryways.
People who don't wish to be affected by smoke can theoretically avoid it or hold their breath when they walk through it. When they go home, they can go home to an environment where they are completely free from it.
Students, however, don't have that option. When students go home, we go to the dorms, and students or housing employees are almost always outside smoking. They smoke in courtyards or right next to doors in recessed entryways - places that are sheltered from the wind and other elements.
This leads to a situation that is intolerable, because the same reasons the smokers choose those shelters cause the smoke to be unable to dissipate. This creates a situation similar to if someone were smoking inside a hallway - a toxic situation as far as second-hand smoke poisoning is concerned.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Students who live in the dorms and frequent the dorm area of campus have no choice but to be exposed to secondhand smoke whenever they step outside or come home from their classes, 24 hours a day. According to the Campus Office of Substance Abuse Prevention, 29.2 percent of students use tobacco. That means that the majority of students do not smoke, but they are being punished with policies that encourage the addictions of a minority, when those addictions have harmful side effects for everyone around them.
This is our home, and because studies show that second-hand smoke, even outdoors, leads to health problems, nonsmokers should have the benefit of the doubt in residential areas of campus. The residence halls should ban smoking in the residential quadrant of campus and have the Resident Advisers, Campus Security and the UNM Police Department enforce the ban.
Nathaniel Schneider
UNM student
