Smoke-Free and Tobacco-Free College Campuses, 2017

Cigarette smoking causes an estimated 480,000 deaths in the United States each year, including about 41,000 among nonsmokers exposed to secondhand smoke. And 99% of adult smokers start before age 26; many become daily smokers as young adults. That makes colleges and universities an important place to protect students, faculty, staff and visitors — and to keep young people from starting.

Smoke-free policies protect nonsmokers from secondhand smoke, make smoking less socially acceptable, help prevent young people from starting, and push smokers to try to quit. CDC and the American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation (ANRF) counted how many campuses had adopted them.

What counts

• Smoke-free: smoking banned everywhere on campus, indoors and out — including remote parking lots, stadiums, performance venues and residence halls.
• Tobacco-free: smoking and smokeless tobacco banned everywhere.

The data came from ANRF's College Campus Tobacco Policy Database, the only national list of campus tobacco policies, built from daily news searches and direct contact with health departments, university officials, students and alumni. Each site of a multi-campus institution counted separately.

The count, November 2017

At least 2,082 campuses were smoke-free. Of those:

• 1,743 (83.7%) were tobacco-free;
• 1,658 (79.6%) specifically banned e-cigarettes;
• 854 (41.0%) specifically banned hookah smoking.

A campus could fall into more than one type.

By state or territory, the number of smoke-free campuses ranged from one in Hawaii and in the Northern Mariana Islands to 108 in California and in North Carolina.

Growth since 2012

In September 2012, the Department of Health and Human Services, the University of Michigan and the American College Health Association launched the Tobacco-Free College Campus Initiative. At that time, 774 campuses were smoke-free and 562 tobacco-free. By 2017, the number with such policies had more than doubled.

State laws

Some campuses are smoke-free because of state or territorial law. As of 2017, four states — Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa and Louisiana — and the Northern Mariana Islands required public college campuses to be entirely smoke-free.

With e-cigarettes and hookah joining the market, policies need to cover the full range of tobacco products.

Why it matters

In 2015, about 40% of U.S. adults aged 18–24 — 12.6 million people — were enrolled at 4,562 degree-granting institutions. That year, 21.4% of adults aged 18–24 used a tobacco product some days or every day, as did 23.8% of adults with some college but no degree. The Surgeon General has concluded there is no risk-free level of secondhand smoke.

Limitations

• Some policies may have been adopted but not yet in effect.
• The database isn't systematically collected from every campus, so it may miss policies.
• There is no count of all U.S. campuses, so the share that are smoke-free — and the number of students protected — can't be calculated.
• There's no uniform way to judge enforcement, and past research shows enforcement varies.

Sources

Based on Wang TW, Tynan MA, Hallett C, Walpert L, Hopkins M, Konter D, King BA, "Smoke-Free and Tobacco-Free Policies in Colleges and Universities — United States and Territories, 2017," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 67(24), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Original report.