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Butts Out: Boise State’s smoke-free campus policy is supported by many
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Freshman Rena Tarlini would like to attend classes without worrying about drifting through a cloud of smoke, seeing cigarette butt litter, getting a smoky stench on her clothes and experiencing a flare-up with her asthma.
Beginning this fall, Tarlini will no longer have to worry about that.
Boise State will become a 100 percent smoke-free campus beginning in the fall term, joining more than 260 college campuses nationwide, according to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation.
“I think it’s a step in the right direction for the health of all BSU students,” Tarlini said.
Originally the brainchild of Executive Director of Human Resource Services Jane Buser, the smoke-free campus policy will make the consumption of tobacco products illegal on all university-owned and leased property.
The ban will include cigarettes, cigars, pipes and all other forms of smoke-generating products. The ban will be enforced through a system of peer accountability on behalf of everyone in the Boise State community, with disciplinary action used only when needed.
“Our focus is to create an environment in which students can reach their full potential,” Ferd Schlapper, executive director of Health, Wellness and Counseling Services, said. “A healthier environment is conducive to learning.”
When the smoke-free campus policy was proposed in 2003, Boise State gained national fame as the first four-year public university in the United States to consider banning smoking. Boise State decided to phase-in the smoke free campus, the most supported action from BSU students.
Many in the BSU community support the ban – more than 80 percent, according to Schlapper.
“Tobacco is the one product, when used properly and as directed, can lead to severe illness and premature death,” Schlapper said. Secondhand smoke, Schlapper said, can be just as dangerous.
For student Annabella Price, the smoke-free campus will offer another positive.
As her mother was dying in a hospital of large-cell carcinoma, a deadly form of lung cancer, Price would offer her licorice sticks to eat, but she would throw them at Price because they weren’t cigarettes. Her mother died in 1990.
“I’ve seen what smoking can do,” Price said. “And even when my mother was dying, she kept asking for that cigarette."
BENJAMIN MACK
News Journalist
