College students put a stop to cigarette smoking on campus
Smoke-free policies spread across college campuses
Molly Huscroft
Colleges across the country are putting an end to smoking on campus. This summer, the University of Kentucky was just one of the more than 500 college campuses that invoked a 100 percent smoke or tobacco-free campus policy as of July 1.
Despite the 46 million smokers in the U.S., the number of colleges to adopt the smoke-free policy has largely increased in recent years. A large amount of the policies’ success can be contributed to grass-roots efforts made by students and campus-employees. “They [the policies] typically are coming about because students and faculty are questioning the role of tobacco in an educational setting and deciding to discourage its use and exposure,” American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation Project Manager Liz Williams said to CNN. She continued to say that in the past year, 120 campuses were added to the smoke-free list.
Smoke-free campuses gained significant popularity during the early 2000s. According to CNN, Ty Patterson, former vice president of Student Affairs at Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield, Missouri, says he started the first smoke-free campus in 2003. Upon discovering that there were no higher education institutions that had implemented a smoke-free policy, Patterson developed his own system violations for
any student or faculty member that did not comply with the campus rules regarding smoking. In its first year, Patterson’s policy was successful – only two students received multiple violations.
any student or faculty member that did not comply with the campus rules regarding smoking. In its first year, Patterson’s policy was successful – only two students received multiple violations.
Since the development of the no-smoking policy, other schools have had success in implementing their own smoking guidelines. After three years of research, the University of Michigan passed a smoke-free policy. The school’s Chief Health Officer Dr. Robert Winfield told CNN that since the ban it has become uncommon to see smokers around campus. Common smoking areas were checked and there “wasn’t a smoker in sight.”
Not everyone is in support of the ban, however. Many believe that enforcing a smoke-free environment infringes on people’s rights. Jonathan Sternberg, an attorney fighting the city-wide smoking ban in Springfield, Missouri, told CNN that smoking bans “just don’t really make sense.”
The University of Florida went tobacco-free in July and Valencia College in Orlando intends to enforce the policy starting in 2012. Patterson predicts that all colleges will be 100 percent smoke-free in 10 years. Many are confident that no-smoking policies will continue to make progress.
Since the negative affects of smoking were made aware, smoking has become “socially less acceptable,” Laura Talbott-Forbes chairwoman of the health association’s Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drugs Coalition, told CNN. “There’s a very health-conscious, socially aware student that we have on campus these days.”
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