Despite University Smoking Bans, Georgia Students Keep Puffing

Bobby Holloway III reports.

Isabella Lynn is a student at Emory University who travels around campus looking for smokers, offering them brochures and even counseling services.

“I know of a couple smokers personally, and it makes me sad. So I felt empowered and wanted to be a part of the program,” she says.

Lynn is a tobacco monitor at Emory. It’s kind of like a hall monitor, but her job is to enforce the campus smoking ban.

“The goal is to inform people that there are plenty of options, and a lot of support present at Emory to help them quit smoking,” Lynn says.

She is also a member of the Tobacco Quit Program at Emory. The university became tobacco-free more than three years ago. Despite the ban, there are still smokers on Emory’s campus. You’ll find them bumming a cigarette or puffing away behind the trees or in back hallways.

Erin Connelly is a junior and biology major at Emory. She feels it should be a matter of personal choice to smoke or not.

“Honesty, I’m opposed to it,” Connelly says. “But I think people should be able to do what they want, they should be able to carry out their terrible lifestyle choices, if they need to.” 

But why is the smoke and tobacco ban policy so important?

Laura Forbes, who teaches health education at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, says college students of today have grown up with smoke-free environments, in public places like restaurants, hotels and schools.

“Campuses have realized that the use of tobacco by its students, and by its visitors and its employees has both negative effects on not only the user, but the individuals that have come in contact with the secondhand smoke,” Forbes says.

Originally, the tobacco bans started at community colleges before reaching major colleges and universities.

Georgia’s university system, which includes Georgia Tech, banned tobacco in late 2014. Tech uses signs to promote a smoke-free campus, but officials say there is no formal enforcement.

“Most of time with policy, you can make something so socially unacceptable that people know that it’s not the cultural norm of that institution or university,” Forbes says.

Which means Georgia Tech students now don’t have to worry about inhaling secondhand smoke or seeing cigarette butts litter their campus. Julie Braden, a graduate student in aerospace engineering, finds the ban refreshing.

“I appreciate it. It’s nice to walk around without smoke everywhere,” Braden says.

But there are still some students who argue a compromise should have been made.

Braden’s suggestion is to designate an area for smokers, so they don’t have to sneak off.

“I think it would make it easier for people to not be hiding and still give an outlet for people,” Braden says.

But universities in the state of Georgia and across the country aren’t trying to accommodate people who use tobacco. They want to smoke out the smokers for good.