Dear Editor,

I am a senior at UWW and currently enrolled in the Health Message and Advocacy capstone course.

The basis of our class is to help accelerate the policy of a tobacco free campus here at Whitewater.

Through various guest speakers, conferences, and research it has been brought to my attention and couldn’t be clearer on why this campus needs to be tobacco-free environment.

The three reasons I am focusing on in this letter are the natural environment in the campus, the health of our students/faculty, and the wrongful assumption that it is not wanted.

With a tobacco free campus, the positive effects will surface immediately. The lack of constant littering of cigarette butts will diminish along with the disposing of smokeless tobacco wastes such as wrappers and cans.

Removing this harmful waste will not only make the campus look better, it will also make it healthier for the environment that we learn in each and every day.

The second reason why we should implement this policy is because as you may already know smoking is very dangerous and harmful to your body and the bodies of those around the smoker.
According to TheTruth.com, an anti-tobacco website, “every six seconds, someone in the united states is going to die directly because of a smoking-related disease or illness.”

There are thousands of unnatural chemicals in cigarette smoke and a handful of already known carcinogens which aren’t just effecting the user directly, but effecting everyone around the user because these chemicals are in second hand smoke as well.

Lastly, the acceptance of a tobacco-free campus is extremely high here at UW-Whitewater.

According to the 2011 “Tobacco-Free Campus Interest Survey,” 71% of UWW students support a tobacco free campus.

It should be very alarming that 71% of the students on campus feel that strongly about a 100% ban policy.

Some reasoning behind this is because of the already-mentioned risks of smoking but along with that is the idea that it will be easier to quit for the people who already smoke.

With a tobacco-free policy in place, it will become an extreme inconvenience to smoke.

That can only only benefit tobacco users who want to quit and may be in the middle of battling quitting.

I hope you can give this some of your consideration.

Thank you.

– Dalton Grove
Senior
UW-Whitewater