St. Thomas University’s smokers may not need to fear possible changes to the University of New Brunswick’s smoking policy affecting their campus, at least for now.
Jeffrey Carleton, STU’s communications director, said the decision would take deliberation, and STU isn’t set to review its smoking policy until 2020.
It was reported in November that UNB was discussing going smoke free on campus. The school had assembled a committee to review its smoking policy.
According to the UNB Student Union’s minutes from Oct. 2, the student representative on the committee reported “the policy committee was all but told [UNB is] going smoke free.”
“Generally the policies of the two universities align … if UNB makes a change, that doesn’t automatically mean we’ll make a change,” said Carleton.
“If UNB does proceed and make a change, we would certainly be willing to sit down and take a look at our policy, if it was warranted.”
Saru Gupta, a third-year student at STU, said she thought going smoke free would be unfair to smokers.
“It would suck because it’s cold and you’d have to go further away to smoke,” said Gupta.
“But I understand that a smoking ban is good because of second-hand smoke, and some students have kids.”
When asked about the review, Sonya Gilks, UNB’s communications director, said UNB wasn’t prepared to discuss the issue yet.
“This is very much in its preliminary stages and there is not much we can say at this point,” said Gilks.
“UNB undertakes regular reviews of its policies and is currently reviewing its smoking policy. No decisions have been made, though.”
STU last updated their smoking policy in 2015 to address the rise of electronic smoking devices. Carleton said STU has considered going smoke free when reviewing its policy in the past, but didn’t due to several concerns.
“Every time that it is updated, that is always something that is looked at,” said Carleton.
“But I know one of the factors is that when you ban something, one of two things happens. It either goes underground, or you create a circumstance where you’re pushing people off campus.”
