University Housing bans e-cigarettes in residence halls
1 min read

University Housing bans e-cigarettes in residence halls

University of South Dakota housing has updated the community living policy to ban the use of electronic cigarettes and vaporizers in residence halls.

“(They) have been known to set off fire detection equipment alarms which could result in evacuation of the residence hall and disruption to your living environment,” University Housing said in an e-mail Wednesday.

Smoking was banned on campus in January 2013 under the Student Government Administration of president Alissa VanMeeteren.

The SGA considered including electronic cigarettes in the smoking ban in the spring 2014 semester, but the conversation stalled.

The updated policy, which is effective immediately, applies to students in on-campus housing only. It is located in the Community Living Policy:

USD Community Living Policies


(Photo: First-year student Alec Triber and sophomore Zach Fuller smoke on the curb outside of North Complex. A campus-wide smoking ban prohibits students, faculty and visitors from smoking anywhere on campus. (File photo/The Volante)

7 thoughts on “University Housing bans e-cigarettes in residence halls

  1. Set off fire alarms, really? They don’t even do this in tiny airplane lavatories. What a load of BS. So how much was the university bribed or threatened to adopt such policy?

    http://www.westernfrontonline.net/news/article_f8068f12-0efe-11e2-8b41-001a4bcf6878.html?success=1

    ”The
    U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced an initiative to
    ban smoking from college campuses last month. This is part of the HHS
    goal to create a society free of tobacco-related disease and death, according to their action plan released by the HHS in 2010.

    Colleges
    who fail to enact campus-wide smoking bans and other tobacco-free
    policies may soon face the loss of grants and contracts from the HHS,
    according to the plan. Western receives grants through a subdivision of
    the HHS called the National Institutes of Health, Acting Vice Provost
    for Research Kathleen Kitto said.”

  2. ………..This pretty well destroys the Myth of second hand smoke:

    Lungs from pack-a-day smokers safe for transplant, study finds.

    By JoNel Aleccia, Staff Writer, NBC News.

    Using lung transplants from heavy smokers may sound like a cruel joke, but a new study finds that organs taken from people who puffed a pack a day for more than 20 years are likely safe.

    What’s more, the analysis of lung transplant data from the U.S. between 2005 and 2011 confirms what transplant experts say they already know: For some patients on a crowded organ waiting list, lungs from smokers are better than none.

    “I think people are grateful just to have a shot at getting lungs,” said Dr. Sharven Taghavi, a cardiovascular surgical resident at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, who led the new study………………………

    Ive done the math here and this is how it works out with second ahnd smoke and people inhaling it!

    The 16 cities study conducted by the U.S. DEPT OF ENERGY and later by Oakridge National laboratories discovered:

    Cigarette smoke, bartenders annual exposure to smoke rises, at most, to the equivalent of 6 cigarettes/year.

    146,000 CIGARETTES SMOKED IN 20 YEARS AT 1 PACK A DAY.

    A bartender would have to work in second hand smoke for 2433 years to get an equivalent dose.

    Then the average non-smoker in a ventilated restaurant for an hour would have to go back and forth each day for 119,000 years to get an equivalent 20 years of smoking a pack a day! Pretty well impossible ehh!

  3. Not sure what this article is suppose to be about; for it, against it or just FYI. Smoke detectors only detect smoke, therefore, it is impossible to set off a smoke detector. Why would this even be an issue? Did someone complain that was actually living there? What was their complaint? What’s next? No gum chewing? How much longer are we going to be pushed around by people who are making these rules/ laws that have no basis and lack logic?

  4. The spread of this sort of misinformation could serve as the basis for a very sound lawsuit against USD as students cover smoke alarms in order to smoke/vape in peace and then, if an electrical or cooking fire breaks out later the covered alarms result in injuries and deaths due to lack of warnings. University officials *KNOW* that students disable their alarms to get around these bans: it’s been cited MANY times over the years as a problem, so they *KNOW* they are risking the lives of their students by saying these things… and they demonstrate their callous lack of caring by promoting the misinformation.

    Anyone who’s ever hosted or been at a smoky party or poker gathering in a home with functioning smoke alarms knows that these alarms are not generally triggered even by fairly intense clouds of cigarette smoke, much less “vaping vapor.” Steamy showers on the other hand….

    – MJM

  5. On what basis? Even showers have set off some of those types of alarms.
    There is a rule of thumb that most Americans still cherish. It’s called Innocent until proven guilty. A wonky alarm is not a valid witness.

  6. It needs to be understood that “smoking bans”, even if on non-smoke vapes, are about a criminally negligent-corrupted regulatory system pretending to be concerned for our health, and about covering up those “regulator’s” approval of deadly industrial substances in not just typical cigarettes but just about every consumer item on the shelves.
    Vaping bans are about banning the APPEARANCE of smoking…since not one person on earth has yet to be harmed by “2nd hand vapors” which would provide an actual justification for such bans. But, no one’s yet been certifiably harmed by 2nd hand smoke from tobacco…though some may have been harmed by smoke from industrially-contaminated products. Has even ONE victim been tested for pesticide, dioxin, radiation and other non-tobacco components of typical cigarettes? Has even one legislator attempted to expose and ban contamination of cigarettes with some of the worst health-damaging substances from chemical, petroleum and pharmaceutical industries?
    It’s just convenient that “smoking” of the tobacco plant is considered “sinful” to some…but the secret industrial poisoning of duped, unwitting, unprotected, uncompensated smokers is of no interest. No matter to Anti Smokers that tobacco is the SIXTH most pesticide intensive plant, and that pretty much all diseases “linked to smoking” are identical to symptoms of exposures to those pesticides and other Non-Tobacco industrial parts of typical VERY Non-Organic cigarettes.
    Easy search of “tobacco pesticides”, “tobacco radiation”, “tobacco dioxin”, etc. No secret…just ignored to protect the big cigarette cartel and its investors and enablers in government.
    To be Anti Smoking SUPPORTS and protects the cigarette industry…and blames its primary victims and an un-patented, even medicinal, natural plant.

Comments are closed.