Game day tests UA’s toothless tobacco ban
Posted on Sunday, August 31, 2008
FAYETTEVILLE — The University of Arkansas campus is now tobacco-free.
It didn’t seem to make much difference to the thousands of Razorback fans who swarmed around the stadium waiting to see Bobby Petrino’s debut as Arkansas’ coach.
The policy was developed by professionals with UA’s Pat Walker Health Center with input from students. It was announced a year before it took effect and bans all forms of tobacco products from all university-owned property and grounds.
Students, faculty, staff and visitors are expected to comply willingly.
A hillside to the east of the stadium was covered with patrol cars from countless police agencies who contributed officers to provide security and traffic control. Whether state, county, local or university, none of the police on hand were enforcing the ban on tobacco that went into effect July 1.
But that’s the point. The prohibition on tobacco is a policy that doesn’t contain an enforcement element.
The theory is that people remind one another that smoking is not allowed and eventually no one will use tobacco on campus.
Karen Smith of Conway is a prime example of how the ban is expected to work.
When asked her opinion of the ban, Smith’s first reaction was to extinguish her cigarette, though she wasn’t asked to do so.
“It sucks,” Smith said about not being able to smoke anywhere on the campus.
Smith and her husband are season ticket holders. She didn’t know about the ban, only that smoking was not allowed in the stadium. That rule came with the tickets, she said.
Of course, not being able to smoke wasn’t going to keep her from enjoying her Razorbacks.
Smith was among the minority of smokers who were greatly outnumbered by people with alcoholic drinks in their hands, which are also banned on campus. Many stuck cans of beer in koozies, but most drank openly.
Wade Weaver, an Arkansas alumni now of Oklahoma, sat among friends south of the stadium as he smoked a Camel Light.
Weaver was less annoyed with the ban on tobacco than another ban, which prohibits re-entering the stadium on the same ticket. If a person is paying $ 45 for a ticket, they should be able to come and go as they please, he said.
Of course, Weaver said, he could miss a cigarette to watch football.
Smokers are the most visible targets of the ban but not always the most vocal.
“Until they get a Copenhagen jail, I’m keeping this in my pocket,” Jeff Eades said, tapping the can of dip in his pocket. Eades said it made much less sense to ban smokeless tobacco because it doesn’t impact anyone. It may be gross when somebody spits on the concrete, he said, but most dippers use cups, bottles or spit in the grass. “I never heard of anybody dying of second-hand chew,” Eades said. It makes sense to ban cigarettes and even smokeless tobacco inside a stadium or building, Eades said. But outside, it’s another story. Eades and his friends weren’t aware the ban on tobacco didn’t carry any penalties. Even if the tobacco ban had teeth, it would probably be enforced about as well as laws against drinking in public, he said, as he sat drinking a bottle of Bud Light Lime.
To contact this reporter: awallworth@arkansasonline. com
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