Students who smoke have been shunned at Pierce, yet a whole new wave of smoke has risen over the campus: water vapor.
Cigarette smokers have been pushed to puff in the parking lots while e-cigarette users can freely inhale around campus without rules or regulations.
If a smoker is caught inhaling their nicotine fix on campus, the initial punishment is a citation with potential disciplinary action.
The repercussions for an e-cigarette user seem to be non-existent on campus.
Students can casually cross campus, puffing away on a metallic pen without fear of penalty while students with a cigarette are harassed off campus because of their addiction.
An e-cigarette may or may not contain nicotine but every exhale brings a casual plume of smoke, or as a regular e-cigarette smoker would tell you: water vapor.
The water vapor from the e-cigarette may not technically be smoke, but after a long exhale from a user, there is a cloud of water vapor trailing from their lips, a casual reminder of the “non-drag” of smoke the user just inhaled.
E-cigarettes were originally designed as a replacement to the cigarette and the Food and Drug Administration is still debating approval in the United States, but they stipulated devices must be sold for therapeutic use—meaning e-cigarettes are being directly made and marketed for smokers, not quitters.
Cigarette smoking was pushed to the parking lots over the last few years in efforts to provide a healthier campus environment according to the Work Environment Committee.
If we want to promote a healthy campus, we need to make sure to include handing out citations to all forms of bad habits.”