Fighting tobacco on college campuses

Background Tobacco-free policies at undergraduate institutions are a powerful tool for reducing smoking rates among college students. However, tobacco-free policies are not yet commonplace and questions remain about whether tobacco-free policies are realistic and how schools become tobacco-free. College administrators and public health practitioners can gain insight into the process from colleges that have already adopted tobacco-free policies.

Methods Representatives of 36 tobacco-free community colleges and universities completed a telephone questionnaire. Information about leaders of change, student roles, challenges, enforcement policies, and satisfaction with tobacco-free policy was obtained. Results were analyzed using SAS (version 9.1). Relationships were examined with Chi-squares and Fisher's Exact tests. Frequencies were used to generate descriptive statistics and confidence intervals.

Results A number of relationships are apparent in the descriptive statistics. However, the small sample size did not allow for statistical significance. The majority of schools' tobacco-free efforts were led by school administration, although students played an important role at some schools. Few schools faced significant challenges. Schools with disciplinary enforcement policies were most likely to report high rates of satisfaction with their tobacco-free policy than those without an enforcement policy.

Conclusion Colleges of many types and sizes have successfully gone tobacco-free. Most schools have done so through the work of their administration. Few colleges faced any significant challenges. A larger sample size is likely to yield a number of statistically significant findings.