MSU Billings goes tobacco-free this fall

Jamie Schoonover has been a smoker for more than 20 years, having taken up the habit as a high school sophomore.
She’s tried multiple times to quit.
Now a student at Montana State University Billings, Schoonover thinks a new policy that will make the campus tobacco-free this summer may give her the incentive to kick the habit.
On Aug. 15, MSUB will go tobacco-free, following by two weeks a similar policy at Montana State University Bozeman that will go into effect Aug. 1.
Both campuses now ban smoking inside buildings, but allow it within a certain distance outside buildings and make no restrictions on other tobacco products.
The two MSU-affiliated schools aren’t breaking new ground in an effort to make campuses healthier.
The University of Montana campuses in Missoula, Butte, Dillon and Helena have banned tobacco products.
Fort Peck Community College in Poplar also went tobacco-free more than a year ago.
At MSUB, the current policy was difficult to enforce because some people had trouble estimating the 30 feet smokers had to stand away from a building, said Darla Tyler-McSherry, health educator with Student Health Services.
People still had to walk through smoke from smokers clustered around entrances.
The current policy also didn’t address the use of spit tobacco, which is harmful to people’s health, too.
Campuses didn’t want to send a message with the current policy that smoking was bad but other forms of tobacco are safe to use, said Jenny Haubenreiser of MSU’s Student Health Service.
After Aug. 15, smokers will have to puff on public sidewalks that border the main MSU Billings campus.
At the College of Technology, there aren’t safe places along Central Avenue and Shiloh Road to stand, so there will be designated smoking areas to the north of campus buildings.
MSU Billings has moved toward the new policy over several years, Tyler-McSherry said.
Last academic year, MSU Billings Chancellor Rolf Groseth asked Tyler-McSherry to form a team to research and take steps to make the Billings campus tobacco free in light of other campuses addressing tobacco use.
Last fall, MSU Billings had open forums for students and others to voice their opinion about a tobacco-free policy.
The meetings drew a good mix of comments, including people critical of the policy who said it was their right to smoke.
“There is no right to smoke,” Tyler-McSherry said. “There is a desire to smoke. We aren’t saying you can’t smoke, just that you can’t smoke on campus.”
At MSU, 61 percent of students voted for a tobacco-free campus in March 2011. The next month, 72 percent of employees voted for the policy. The University Council gave its final approval in October.
Most students at the Billings and Bozeman campuses don’t smoke.
A fall 2010 survey showed 14 percent of MSU Billings students smoked, with 8 percent using smokeless tobacco daily.
That’s a lower spit tobacco rate than many other Montana campuses.
At the MSU Bozeman campus, for example, 11 percent of students use spit tobacco, which is three to four times the national rate, Haubenreiser said.
Another MSU Billings survey last spring showed that half of the students who do smoke want to quit by the time they graduate.
“There is a need and desire to quit this unhealthy habit,” Tyler-McSherry said.
The new policy not only protects nonsmokers from secondhand smoke, but also encourages smokers to quit.
Nationally, there’s a momentum for more restrictions on collegiate tobacco use.
As of October 2011, at least 586 campuses were smoke-free across the country with another 252 tobacco-free.
A new U.S. Surgeon General’s report on tobacco use by young people aged 12 through 25 further validates the new campus policy, Haubenreiser said.
The report issued earlier this month noted that the younger people are when they begin smoking, the more likely they will become addicted to tobacco. Also, the rates of decline of smoking have slowed in the last decade and the rate of smokeless tobacco use no longer is dropping.
Smoking also retards lung development in young people.
The new tobacco policy is anti-tobacco, not anti-smoker, Haubenreiser said.
Both MSU and MSU Billings health services offer help for smokers to quit.