Fullerton is first Cal State to ban all tobacco use

Starting in summer 2013, anxious Cal State Fullerton students wanting to puff a post-final exam cigarette will have to leave campus to do it. This week, the university's interim president signed an order banning use of all forms of tobacco(http://www.freetobacco.info/) on campus, the first school in the California State University system to do so. The ban will take effect in August next year, allowing the university an educational campaign about the prohibition and get students accustomed to it. The way the new rule is written, smokers puffing in their cars with the windows up would be violating the rule if they were in a campus parking lot or street.



"If you're on campus, you're on campus," said John Bedell, a sociology professor. Bedell also heads the university's Academic Senate, a 48-member body comprised of faculty, staff and students. Earlier this year, the Senate voted unanimously to back the ban. "We can hardly get unanimity that it's Friday," Bedell said. "To pass this is huge." The professor said he's received e-mails from people who not only support the ban, but wish it went into effect much sooner. Punishments for violating the new rule have yet to be determined. The sweeping ban didn't come about overnight. Bedell said the proposal has been mulled over for a couple of years.

Sakae Nishida, who will transfer to Fullerton as a business major in the fall, said she understands many people's aversion to smoke. "I avoid places where people are smoking," she said. But, she added, she believes the campus should have designated areas for smokers. "People who smoke cigarettes have rights in open air," Nishida said. The school's previous policy prohibited smoking inside buildings and within 20 feet of their entrances, but allowed smoking in open-air areas unless otherwise posted. Walking around campus, it's not difficult to find discarded butts, which seem to be more numerous in campus planters than in the ashtrays located around the quad.

"The campus is filthy with cigarette butts," Bedell said. Another reason, Bedell said, was universal disdain for the 20-foot rule. Often smokers congregate in front of some buildings' ventilation intakes. To some faculty on say, the fifth floor, "It would smell like they were smoking in their offices," Bedell said. "Besides, shouldn't the university be about health?"