By Valerie Velikaya
A student is challenging the no tobacco policy at the college, disputing whether e-cigarettes should be included in the regulation.
Patrick Mckown has been a smoker since he was barely an adolescent, and only recently has the 37-year-old chosen to quit, giving credit to the nicotine vaporizer as being the viable substitution to his long-term crutch.
Ditching the “cancer sticks” for electronic cigarettes has benefitted Mckown mentally, physically – even hygienically.
“It’s not quite the same mouth-feel as taking a drag off a cigarette, but it’s close enough that my mind thinks I am smoking, and I am able to function normally and not eat like a pig,” he said. “It doesn’t stink like a cigarette. My cars, my clothes, my hands [and] my breath, everything smells better. I don’t cough up phlegm every morning.”
Smoking e-cigarettes would also decrease the amount of cigarette butts littered around campus, which was an issue before the no tobacco policy was enacted.
Recently, Mckown encountered a problem on campus, where he was reprimanded for smoking in the math resource center.
“I wasn’t using it in class,” he said. “I was in the halls […] someone came up to me and said I wasn’t allowed to do that, and I didn’t think that there was any rule against it.”
Mckown investigated the matter, conducting research on e-cigarettes as well as contacting several administrators pertaining to the issue, including Paul Kyle, Dean of Student Services.
“[Kyle] told me that the vaporizers were considered tobacco products for the policy so I looked them up and they’re not defined as tobacco products by the state of Kansas or the federal government,” said Mckown, “so I don’t really think that there is a policy right now.”
Although e-cigarettes have not been extensively researched by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a recent court decision following the case of e-cigarette manufacturers, Sottera, Inc. v. FDA, resulted in statement under the Tobacco Control Act that “e-cigarettes and other products made or derived from tobacco are not drugs, devices or combination products, unless they are marketed for therapeutic purposes and that the FDA can regulate them as tobacco products.”
“It may not be tobacco in the strictest sense,” said Dennis Day, vice president of Student Success and Engagement, “but it’s considered a tobacco product or nicotine is considered a tobacco product or derivative.”
Items ranging from cigarettes to snuff as well as e-cigarettes constitute as a tobacco through the eyes of the college, and without clear evidence correlating with Mckown’s assessment (indicated in the guest column on pg. 12), the institution will retain its policy.
“If we are proved to be totally wrong by science […] then we can always change the policy, but right now it is our understanding that it is a tobacco product and can be harmful to others,” said Day.
For more information about the school’s tobacco policy, scan the QR code to visit the college’s website: http://www.jccc.edu/policies/procedures/tobacco-free-campus-428-01.html
Contact Valerie Velikaya, news editor, at vvelikay@ jccc.edu.