Stepping out for a quick smoke on campus may become more difficult if a city or
dinance banning smoking within 25 feet of a publicly owned building is applied at
the University.
The Eugene City Council passed an
ordinance Feb. 28 that extended the city smoking ban to 25 feet from the door for all publicly owned buildings, but Ward 3 City Councilor David Kelly said it is not enforceable for state-owned buildings such as those at the University. The ban is still 10 feet for all other buildings.
Legal counsel is examining whether the University is legally obligated to enforce the ordinance, and in the meantime, University officials are working on crafting a similar
policy that could be used on campus.
“It needs to be what best works for the University,” Director of Environmental Health and Safety Kay Coots said. “There’s a lot of people with various interests that need to weigh in on whichever direction the University ends up headed.”
Director of Health Education Paula Staight said she has been in discussion
with Coots about how to inform people about the possible change in smoking
rules and is optimistic a 25-feet-from-the-door rule could get campus-wide
support.
Kelly said the City Council received “very, very minor opposition” to the change. He
said the ordinance “is a footnote kind of
thing for the most part,” stressing that it
doesn’t affect bars and restaurants, only
publicly-owned buildings.
Staight said a campus advisory board surveyed people from various departments a couple years ago about whether they would support such a change and the response was strongly in favor of it.
“It was pretty almost unanimous that they would support that because of the issues of tobacco smoke drifting up into the open windows,” Staight said.
Problems with cigarette smoke going into campus buildings’ ventilation systems have invoked 50-feet-from-the-door smoking
policies at certain buildings such as the Lillis Business Complex and Allen Hall, and Coots said those problems are seen as incentives to enact a new policy.
Coots and Staight both said there is no set time frame for when a University policy could be enacted because of the array of different considerations and because legal counsel has yet to make a decision about the applicability of the city ordinance.
Coots said banning smoking within 25 or 50 feet of an entrance is a first step, but other issues such as smoking around campus walkways and the aesthetic aspect that could come with only certain areas of campus being open to smokers could inhibit the speed in which a policy is formulated.
“It seems like such a simple issue, but it
really has very many different layers to get through to solve all the issues,” Coots said.
Staight said she eventually would like to see a smoking ban on the
entire campus and said K-12 public schools across the country have
begun embracing campus-wide smoking bans.
Jacque Pollard, a graduate teaching fellow in the English department, said she doesn’t think such a ban is enforceable and said the negative reaction it would receive would hamper its effectiveness.
“I’d be pretty cheesed off if I was told I had to go to Rennie’s to have a cigarette,” Pollard said.
University law school graduate Kevin Franken testified at the City Council meeting that addressed the ordinance and said he is confident the University community will work with the city to embrace the ordinance and enforce the ban.
He said he was not aware that the city ordinance may not be enforceable at the University but said he is optimistic about the University being able to enforce a policy of its own.
“The University community really needs to come behind this effort to reduce smoking and reduce exposure of nonsmokers to second-hand smoke,” Franken said.
Creative writing professor Laurie Drummond said she supports the University’s efforts to decrease
the community’s exposure to
second-hand smoke but questioned where smokers would go if they
had to be at least 25 feet from a building entrance.
“I’m all in favor of not imposing my habit on others, but I hate to see it become punitive,” Drummond said. “I think they need to set up a smoking area.”
Staight said she does not support the creation of designated smoking areas because they could be aesthetically unappealing.
“It would be nice to not have smokers congregated,” Staight said.
GTF Terese Reynolds said extending the smoking ban on campus is
not something she is particularly excited about because of laws that
already restrict smoking in bars
and restaurants.
“Let’s keep outside. This is the only place we have left,” Reynolds said.
“Give us a dry spot and I’ll move,” Reynolds said.
