BY ALEXANDER ROLLE

In print | Published October 23, 2008

On Sept. 11, 2008, a new anti-smoking law went into effect in Pennsylvania amid ongoing discussions within the Swarthmore community concerning the presence of smoking on campus. The bill, called the Clean Indoor Air Act, bans smoking in most indoor public places. Exemptions to the law include bars where less than 20 percent of sales are food and certain areas on casino floors.

According to Assistant Dean of Residential Life Rachel Head, the law will not compel the college to revise its current smoking policies because Swarthmore was “already in compliance with that law before it was passed,” she said. However, other colleges and universities in Pennsylvania, particularly some state schools, are legally required to tighten their smoking regulations. After Governor Edward Rendell signed the law, the chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education decided to ban outdoor smoking at all 14 of Pennsylvania’s state-owned universities.

While the administration has not taken concrete measures to revise the college’s current smoking policy, the subject has definitely been “on people’s minds,” according to Head, who added that the issue is of concern to numerous departments and committees, particularly the Housing Committee. “There are a lot of offices that would [need to] be involved in any discussion of the issue … it will be discussed by the Housing Committee at their next meeting,” Head said.

According to Head, if the school were to adjust its rules, one possible change might be a decrease in the number of smoking dorm rooms on campus, as members of the administration have questioned whether student demand is sufficient to justify the number of accommodations for smokers. “There don’t seem to be a lot of people on campus who smoke and those who do tend to be pretty considerate about it,” Head said, although she noted that some parents have expressed concern over the presence of tobacco smoke in student dorms.

Over the summer, according to Head, the housing office received several calls from parents whose first year students had been placed in smoking dorms. These callers wanted to know if smokers in these dorms are subject to any restrictions. Head confirmed that such restrictions are indeed in place.

Students are not permitted to smoke in any of the common areas of smoking dorms, such as hallways and lounges, although they may smoke in their own rooms – so long as they do so with the door closed and with the consent of their roommates.

Worth Health Center Director Beth Kotarski said in an e-mail message that one of the goals of health services at Swarthmore is “reducing disability, disease and time away from school related activities because of smoking (and second-hand smoking) related illness.” According to Kotarski, Worth’s health fair, along with the Student Health Advisory Council, “provide[s] smoking cessation information and we provide referrals year round to students who wish to kick the habit.”

Kotarski said that Pennsylvania’s latest anti-smoking law will be most beneficial to non-smokers who live and work in proximity to smokers and therefore suffer the effects of secondhand smoke, known within the medical community as Environmental Tobacco Smoke.

“I think we have to respect the research now that secondhand smoke is dangerous to the innocent bystanders in smokers’ lives. The newer laws like the one in Pennsylvania are beginning to address this,” she said, noting that the demographic groups most vulnerable to secondhand smoke are infants, asthmatics and the elderly.

Kotarski also expressed concern with young smokers’ overconfidence in the inevitability of major scientific breakthroughs in cancer treatment and prevention. She proceeded to relate the story of a student who said that she was not concerned about the adverse health consequences of her smoking habit because she is confident that by the time she is at-risk for developing lung cancer, “there will be a cure.”

Recently, the Swarthmore Co-op stopped selling tobacco products. According to Gerry Greway, manager of the Co-op, the move came about in part because of the “fact that, as a cooperative, part of our mission is to promote healthy living.” While mentioning that the Co-op respected the right of the customer to make his or her own choices about smoking, Greway said that, “as a board, we felt we were not truly being what we wanted to be in the community by selling cigarettes.”

In addition, Greway said that tobacco products “didn’t represent a significant amount of sales” at the Co-op. While some Swarthmore students now have to walk farther to get their cigarettes, Greway said that the response the store has gotten has been “about 95 percent positive … though of course there have been some exceptions.”

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