ONU Goes Tobacco Free

            This bold move is not much of a surprise to many students and faculty walking the Ohio Northern campus. The college is known for its abundance of plants, wildlife, and its recent shift towards becoming a green campus. Will a smoke and tobacco free campus help improve the campus image? Many think so, but with any bold move there is sure to be controversy. One potential problem that comes to my mind is accordance and regulation.

            The tobacco free policy is effective starting on August 17^th.  The policy states,

“Any tobacco or tobacco-derived substance including but not limited to, cigarettes, cigars, cigarillos, pipe tobacco, hooka tobacco, snuff, chewing tobacco, dipping tobacco, bidis, blunts, clove cigarettes, e-cigarettes or any other tobacco preparation, nicotine containing product or product intended to mimic tobacco products other than those approved by the U.S Food and Drug Administration for the purpose of treating tobacco or nicotine dependence.”

ONU is home to more than 3,500 students who come from all over the world representing 34 states and 25 different countries. I would argue that this new policy will receive a decent amount of rebel from those who smoke. The overall number of people who smoke in the US has been reduced over the last decade, but smoking on a college campus is still widely accepted, and practiced.

In theory the policy is great to those who do not partake in smoking, but to the ones who do smoke it is more of an annoyance than anything.  People are not going to walk or get in their car and drive off campus to take a drag. That almost sounds absurd. I am sure the numbers will drop, but I do not anticipate that everyone will obey this new policy.

The enforcement according to the policy statement is solely on the person committing the act and for those around to speak up. Right away I would assume there wont be too many people reporting people for smoking an e-cigarette.

Regardless of how the regulation and people respond to this new policy, the tobacco free campus is a trend we are starting to see around the Midwest. It is not much of a surprise after legislation prohibiting smoking in restaurants was so widely accepted in many states.

There will be always problems regulating people from smoking on campus, and we will probably never see a 100% smoke free campus. However, I feel for the image ONU is going for by joining the other campuses and going tobacco free will ultimately be a good move. I look forward to seeing how the 2015- 2016 academic year goes with this new policy in play.