Smoking task force hears from Univ. research group

The smoking task force at West Virginia University met with members of the Translational Tobacco Reduction Research program Thursday to learn about the dangers of tobacco use.

Task force members heard a presentation from T2R2 based on research done at WVU’s Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center, said C.B. Wilson, associate provost for Academic Personnel and task force chair.

The presentation included information about tobacco use among college students, other institutions who have gone smoke free and the smoke-free initiatives at the Health Sciences Campus, Wilson said.

"We talked about the trend across the country and more and more campuses adopting tobacco free policies," said Valerie Frey-McClung of T2R2.

In November 2009, approximately 170 college campuses were tobacco free, Frey-McClung said. Today the number is 370.

"There’s a huge push for college campuses to adopt tobacco-free policies," Frey-McClung said.

The task force also discussed the issue of
secondhand smoke on campus, Wilson said.

"The science is proven," Frey-McClung said. "There’s no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke."

Possible cessation methods for the campus going tobacco free were also discussed, Wilson said.

"A majority of college students don’t smoke, and the majority of West Virginia doesn’t smoke, but there is a percentage of the population that does," Frey-McClung said.

"If you’re going to change the policy, you have to reach out to people who will be affected."

Wilson said the smoking task force will meet next March 4.

"I expect that we’re going to have another presentation by some individuals that will further clarify some of the issues we’re trying to talk about," Wilson said.

The task force hopes to have focus groups to gather student and faculty input but is unsure when this will happen, Wilson said.

"It’s clear that we’re in the early stages, so we’re probably going to have a few more of these kinds of sessions," he said.
 

• Facebook Comments
• Site Comments

1 comments

Anonymous

Tue Feb 9 2010 13:06

There is no smoke-free initiative on the HSC campus; there is a total ban of tobacco products, including products that don’t even have tobacco in them but get their nicotine from Tobacco, yet HSC feels it is ok for them to violate their own policy as long as they can sell nicotine gum for a profit, which derives its nicotine from the same source.

Why must we have a cessation program, who is WVU to tell us we should quit instead of switching to other nicotine delivery products that do not expose others to risk. There are a higher percentage of alcoholics in this state (and on this campus) than there are nicotine users, yet no one is suggesting we go after them. Why because they are only hurting themselves, yet nicotine users are not afforded that same privilege.

The studies that found there are no safe levels of secondhand smoke are based on in-door air, which ignored the fact that there are levels that are considered safe outside of cigarettes. Benzopyrene one of the carcinogens (one of the ones known to cause lung cancer) in tobacco smoke, is also produced from coal products and is also found in low levels in foods that have been smoked, and other sources. A paper published by the NIH, says 96% of Benzopyrene released are from coal refuse piles, outcrops, abandoned coal mines, coke manufacture. The FDA allows a maximum permissible level in battle water of 0.0002 mg/L. This is just one example.

The studies done on outdoor secondhand smoke show that you are exposed to and inhaling some of the smoke, but assume since there is no safe level of in-door secondhand smoke, there must be no safe level of out-door secondhand smoke. While that alone maybe enough to regulate and restrict where people smoke tobacco, they have no bearing on smokeless or pure nicotine dilvery products, yet they are used to justify banning of these products as well.

If the Translational Tobacco Reduction Research program was a serious program, they would be researching and improving newer safer nicotine delivery products for smokers to move to, rather than doing studies trying to outlaw nicotine use. You also noticed C. B. Wilson isn’t bothering calling in any of the experts who have any counter points to his agenda.

Add comment


I am not posting spam. I understand posting spam or other comments that are unrelated to this article will cause my comment to be flagged for deletion and possibly cause my IP address to be permanently banned from this server.

Enter the characters in the image above:

log out