The sale of tobacco products earns the EMU thousands of dollars in revenue each year, but one University professor says it’s not right for the school to profit from smoking.
V. Pat Lombardi, a professor in the biology department, said he was “appalled” when he learned that Erb Essentials, a convenience store in the EMU basement, sold cigarettes and smokeless tobacco.
“Cigarette smoking is the number one cause of premature death in the U.S.,” he said. “For the University to profit from (tobacco sales) … is absolutely a tough thing to swallow, to say the least.”
Lombardi intends to ask the EMU Board to ban all tobacco sales in the EMU.
EMU Board Chairwoman Christa Shively said the students, administrators and staff members who sit on the board want to find out whether students support selling tobacco products in the EMU before they make a decision.
If the EMU lost tobacco revenue, she said, it could mean more student fee money would have to be spent on EMU expenses such as utility and maintenance.
EMU Food Services Director John Costello said tobacco sales accounted for 7.5 percent of total EMU food service sales last year.
Of the $317,360 Erb Essentials brought in last year, more than one third of that money — $103,686 — was from tobacco, he said.
But those figures don’t reflect corollary purchases by tobacco customers, he said. If Erb Essentials stops selling tobacco products, the store may lose those non-tobacco sales as well, he said.
Senior Shari Takara, who works in Erb Essentials, said banning cigarette sales in the store wouldn’t discourage students from smoking because students would still buy them somewhere else.
“If we don’t sell them, they’re just going to walk to 7-11,” she said.
Regardless of whether students buy cigarettes elsewhere, Lombardi said, it is not ethical for the University to indirectly support the tobacco companies and profit from tobacco sales.
Lombardi, who has several relatives who have died from smoking-related illnesses, said tobacco profits are “tainted money” because they are made at the expense of people’s health — smokers directly and non-smokers indirectly from secondhand smoke.
“I feel bad for students if they lose funds,” he said. “But the University should never have gotten into (tobacco sales) in the first place.”
The EMU Board will meet at 4 p.m. Wednesday in the EMU Board Room, located on the third floor of the EMU. The meeting is open to the public, and students are encouraged to come, Shively said.
Kara Cogswell is a student activities reporter for the Oregon Daily Emerald. She can be reached at [email protected].