JU becomes a no smoking zone

Mou Chakraborty
Kolkata, March 7, 2007

Jadavpur University authorities are determined to smoke out cigarettes from the campus. Come April and libraries, laboratories, workshops and heritage buildings of the university will turn into non-smoking zones. Sale and distribution of cigarettes as well as tobacco advertisements will be prohibited on the campus.
The executive council of JU took the decision in response to a circular issued by the UGC. “Everyone knows that cigarette smoking is injurious to health. But until we take some concrete steps, we will not be able to sop it. And UGC too wants the institutions of higher learning to become non-smoking areas. Hence, we took the first step in this direction on Wednesday,” said professor Partha Pratim Biswas, a member of the executive council.
While CU had stopped buying, selling and distributing of cigarettes on the university premises, it had not marked any part of the campus as non-smoking. JU has gone a step ahead and tagged the administrative block Aurobindo Bhavan and the chemical engineering building, both heritage structures, as non-smoking areas. The ban on smoking is applicable to students, teachers, non-teaching employees, university officials as well as visitors.
“Getting students and teachers to obey the rules may be comparatively easy, but the tough part would be to make the officials and non-teaching employees to abide by them too. By making the administrative block a non-smoking area, the university will have to take on this tough task,” a senior official of the university said.
Smoking will, however, be permitted on the rest of the campus but buying and selling of cigarettes or distributing them to anyone will be strictly prohibited on all corners of the campus and within a 100-yard radius. Even advertisements of tobacco products will be banned within the university limits.
At present, some canteens on the campus do sell cigarettes, though discreetly. “None of the canteens in the university will be allowed to sell cigarettes,” Biswas said. “There are many stalls around the university and all those shops will have to stop selling cigarettes. We have asked the state government to take appropriate steps in this regard.”
mou.hindustantimes@yahoo.com