Montana State campuses to go smoke free this fall

Montana State University campuses in Bozeman and Billings plan to kick the smoking habit this fall.
The Bozeman campus goes smoke free on Aug. 1, followed two weeks later by the Billings campus on Aug. 15.
"There is no right to smoke," Darla Tyler-McSherry, health educator with Student Health Services, told the Billings Gazette. "There is a desire to smoke. We aren't saying you can't smoke, just that you can't smoke on campus."
Some students are against the ban.

"What's next? No nachos?" said ex-smoker Stephen Samek. "Everybody should make their own decisions. I agree it (smoking) is not healthy, but I think it's a personal choice."
Currently, both campuses allow smoking 30 feet away from buildings. There are no restrictions on other tobacco products.
Other schools have already banned tobacco products. University of Montana campuses in Missoula, Butte, Dillon and Helena have bans in place, as does Fort Peck Community College in Poplar.
Sixty-one percent of MSU students voted for a tobacco-free campus in March 2011. A month later, 72 percent of employees voted for the ban on campus.
"There is a need and desire to quit this unhealthy habit," Tyler-McSherry said.
She said the current policy at the MSU-Billings campus is hard to enforce because of the difficulty in estimating 30 feet from a building. That meant people still had to walk through smoke from smokers around building entrances.

At the Billings campus, smokers will have to move to public sidewalks that border the campus.
Designated smoking areas are planned to the north of campus buildings at the College of Technology, which doesn't have safe places to stand along Central Avenue and Shiloh Road.
Across the nation in October 2011, at least 252 campuses were tobacco. There were 586 smoke free campuses.