The nicotine-free policy instituted at the University of Oregon at the beginning of September has been years in the making.
“I’ve worked on tobacco control for eight years,” said Paula Staight, advisor to the Student Health Advisory Committee@@https://healthcenter.uoregon.edu/Home/SHACStudentHealthAdvisoryCommittee/SHACApplication.aspx@@. “This didn’t just happen overnight. This took years (of) polling students (and) making policy.”
On Sept. 1, the UO became the first school in the Pac-12 conference to become a smoke and tobacco-free campus; however, the UO Health Center has worked to ensure that tobacco users are not without an alternative through its nicotine replacement therapy program, run by Peer Health.@@http://healthcenter.uoregon.edu/About/HealthPromotion.aspx@@ Student coordinator Josh Buehler said that the goal of the program is to help the UO in its transition to a tobacco-free campus.@@http://uoregon.edu/findpeople/person/Josh*Buehler@@
“It’d be difficult for the campus to say ‘no smoking’ when they offer no other alternative,” Buehler said.
The program, which has been running for the past two years, provides a six-week supply of nicotine gum or patches to students, free of charge. In addition, students make a personal quit plan and receive weekly support through email.
All forms of nicotine, aside from patches and gum, are banned on campus, as patches and gum are the only FDA-approved nicotine quit aids. According to Staight, this rule is in accordance with the decision to be both smoke and tobacco-free, as opposed to just smoke-free.
“(The American College Health Association) suggests tobacco-free instead of smoke-free,” she said. “If we were just smoke-free, students could use all those other nicotine products … One of the reasons (we chose to go smoke and tobacco-free) was because we didn’t want to push students from smoking to smoke-free products, thinking it’s a safe alternative when it is not.”@@http://www.acha.org/@@
Staight said that although there is a vocal minority opposing the policy, the decision to go smoke and tobacco-free was made in accordance with the majority of students supporting a tobacco-free campus in polls.
Currently, the nicotine replacement therapy program has enough funding from grants to run for the next three years, according to Staight. However, she said she hopes the program will become unnecessary.
“Ideally the program will go away, because students will go onto campus knowing it’s smoke and tobacco-free and won’t start,” she said.