Clemson plans ban on all tobacco on campus by 2014

To contact us Click HERE
  Clemson University, which spent millions helping farmers grow tobacco and was famed for tobacco-spitting football coach Danny Ford, is banning all tobacco products both indoors and outdoors within two years.
Clemson officials said they are bringing together students, professors and administrators to write a tobacco-free policy and put the plans in place by 2014.
Clemson won't be the first South Carolina school to ban tobacco, but it will be the largest. The school has plenty of ties to tobacco, such as a $380,000 grant from Philip Morris International in 2010 to pay for research to lower the cost of growing the crop and the image of Ford with a plug of tobacco in his cheek watching the championship-winning Tigers play in the 1980s.

But with all the research on the dangers of smoking and other tobacco use, the university decided it was time to take another step to improve the health of students and employees, said George Clay, the university's executive director of student health.
"Clemson University has a strategic goal of providing a healthy and safe campus. This was one of the ways to do that," Clay said. "We feel the issue for reducing tobacco use, particularly smoking among employees and students is especially compelling."
Surveys have shown about 12 percent of students smoke on campus, and Clay estimates about that number of employees are likely smokers too. Smoking is already banned in all university buildings.
The task force will seek ways that the university can help those people stop smoking, said Clay, who will lead the panel.
The American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation estimates more than 600 colleges and universities across the country are tobacco free. In South Carolina, that list includes Charleston Southern University, Lander University and the University of South Carolina Upstate. The main University of South Carolina campus in Columbia does not have a campus-wide tobacco ban, but its tobacco policy expresses the hope of banning the substance completely one day.
Since announcing the ban Thursday, Clay said he has receiving a couple of dozen messages from people against the idea. But he expects support will rise. He compares it to indoor smoking bans that were fought fiercely a decade or two ago, but aren't given a second thought now.
"It's definitely been accepted. Even a determined smoker would be hesitant to light up indoors in public these days," Clay said.
Clemson estimates the tobacco ban will save about $1 million a year in health care costs and other expenses.
The ban means football fans won't be able to smoke or chew tobacco while tailgating on campus either. When the University of Arkansas imposed a similar ban four years ago, some fans weren't happy, university spokesman Steve Voorhies said.
But the grumbling soon ended, and the ban appears to be working for the most part.
"It's probably abided by about as much as the no drinking policy is abided by," Voorhies said.

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Clemson plans ban on all tobacco on campus by 2014 - State & Regional - TheState.com