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Beginning next fall, the Tobacco-Free Campus Committee will begin holding a series of monthly forums for the student body to sound off on the committee’s tobacco-free proposal.
The committee is in the process of forming a student advisory committee of student leaders from groups on campus, committee co-chair Lauri Sidelko said Friday before the committee met. She said the student advisory committee will be comprised of students both for and against the proposal to ensure the best plan of action for the University of Maine.
Sidelko marveled at the amount of attention the committee’s proposal to prohibit all tobacco use by all faculty, staff, students and visitors to UMaine, “I can’t believe how much attention our committee has gotten statewide.”
UMaine is not the first university in the University of Maine System (UMS) to develop tobacco-free campus environments. The University of Southern Maine (USM) has had a smoke-free campus policy since 1986, which prohibits smoking “on all campus grounds, except in designated smoking areas.”
USM’s policy extends those outdoor smoke-free areas to all entryways, stairways, bus-stop areas, ATMs, areas where there is fixed seating, athletic fields, partially enclosed areas such as breezeways, and walkways between sections of buildings.
The major difference between the USM policy and UMaine’s Tobacco-Free Campus Committee’s proposal is the prohibition of all smoke and smoke-free tobacco on campus, USM’s policy does not include any provisions about smokeless tobacco products.
