Alex Kvaskov and Kanchi Uttamchandani | News Team
Featured image: Gateway Cigar Store continues to sell cigarettes in cash-only transactions, despite Ontario’s ban on tobacco sales on campus. | Amir Yazdanparast
Although Ontario has banned the sale of tobacco on university campuses, apparently not everyone has gotten the message.
The Gateway Cigar Store at Keele campus continues to sell cigarettes under the counter for cash only. When confronted, store staff refused to speak to Excalibur reporters. Gateway Newstands was unavailable for comment.
Under the Smoke-Free Ontario Act, the sale of tobacco on university and college campuses is illegal since January of 2015. This applies to spaces owned and leased by universities and student unions. Gateway is a tenant of the Student Centre, according to York spokesperson Barbara Joy, but the Student Centre was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.
“Breaching the ban can lead to prosecution. Fines on conviction range between $2,000 to $50,000 for an individual or $5,000 to $75,000 for a corporation,” explains Osgoode professor Faisal Bhabha.
Bhabha firmly believes the ban on the sale of tobacco on campus goes too far, noting that while the harmful effects of tobacco are well-known, there is little evidence correlating the sale of tobacco on post-secondary campuses to smoking rates.
“For students who live off-campus, as the majority of York students do, a ban may simply be an inconvenience. But for students addicted to nicotine, especially those who live on campus, a ban is punitive and possibly discriminatory,” Bhabha adds.
He reasons that while a ban may help prevent some young people from starting to smoke, the benefits do not outweigh the downsides of the ban, including the harm it causes to addicts and the paternalistic restriction it places on the choices of young adults.
“Top-down efforts to restrict free choice should be treated with high scepticism, especially on a university campus. There are already ample restrictions on where smoking can occur in order to reduce the potential [effects] of secondhand smoke. People should be free to harm themselves if they’re not hurting others,” remarks Bhabha.
On the other hand, health policy professor Kenneth Lam believes such a ban does help address the problem to a certain extent, as students who are smokers would have a more difficult time accessing cigarettes, which in turn reduces their episodes of exposure to smoking.
But it may also negatively impact smoker students in that many tend to smoke more to relieve pressure during stressful times like an exam period.
In one 2012 study, smoking bans saw a cut in the number of people hospitalized for heart attacks, strokes and other respiratory diseases. Statistics have yet to be released on whether the banning of cigarette sales on campuses have any impact on smoking rates in young adults.
