TX: Research group calls for tobacco ban

[PVPuff&Stuff]

Social Engineering 101: We don't like it so you can't have it.

Because of a new provision from one of the University’s top research funders, UT will need to enact a tobacco-free policy or risk losing millions of research dollars.

The Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas, a voter-mandated organization that awards millions of research dollars each year to entities pursuing cancer research, released a statement on Feb. 2 stating it will now require all current and future grantees to create tobacco-free workplaces as a condition for accepting the Institute’s funds. UT currently receives approximately $31 million for cancer research from the Institute and is applying for $88 million this year.

The Institute has given UT until March 1 to make appropriate policy changes.

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In March 2011, UT President William Powers, Jr. said he opposed a campus-wide ban on smoking during an address to Staff Council. Powers said such a ban would overstep the limits a University should impose on its community.

“What we’re doing is saying we are going to limit the freedom of the person who wants to smoke for the benefit of the people who don’t want to be in a smoke-filled office or room,” Powers said in the address, according to a March 2011 Daily Texan article.

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from the "nanny" side
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Huang said a tobacco-free policy is a step in the right direction for UT and that in four years incoming students will know no other policy.

“A lot of it is changing social norms,” Huang said. “A lot of people put up with other peoples’ smoke but they hate it. People have more of a right to breathe clean air than smokers have the right to smoke.”

No....they don't actually. Your rights don't infringe on mine.