CONWAY - In 2009, Arkansas legislators voted to ban smoking on state-supported college campuses, or at least most people thought they did.
But more than four years later, electronic cigarettes, which are also called e-cigarettes, are still legal and permitted on some of the state’s four-year campuses.
The reason lies in the definitions in the legislative ban, the Arkansas Clean Air on Campus Act of 2009. Those definitions, written before battery-operated e-cigarettes were as common as they are today, effectively limit the smoking ban to tobacco products.
The catch: Electronic cigarettes contain nicotine but not tobacco.
Schools that say they donot have an e-cigarette ban include the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, the University of Arkansas at Monticello, Arkansas Tech University in Russellville and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
However, like some other places around the country, UCA, UAM and UAPB are now looking to ban the electronic devices.
Those places include New York, whose City Council unanimously voted this month to extend a smoking ban to include e-cigarettes. The ban applies to places like beaches, parks, restaurants and office buildings. The Oklahoma State University/A&M board of regents also recently approved a ban on e-cigarettes, as well as hookahs, vapor devices and clove cigarettes onOSU’s Stillwater campus.
Of the four-year public universities that responded to a survey by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, only the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith has a policy that specifically bans e-cigarettes, though the student portion of that policy cites the 2009 state law.
Spokesmen for Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia and Henderson State University in Arkadelphia did not respond to the survey.
Colleges that say they do not allow e-cigarettes on their campuses and cite a tobacco ban or operating procedures as the basis for enforcement are the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and Arkansas State University at Jonesboro.
In Conway, UCA President Tom Courtway advised that university’s trustees in October that a task force was being formed “to study the use of e-cigarettes on campus,” spokesman Fredricka Sharkey said in an email.
The task force is scheduled in February to recommend to the board of trustees that the university ban e-cigarettes, Sharkey said.
While UAM has no written policy against e-cigarettes, one is in the works, spokesman Christy Pace said.
“The program coordinator for [the] Tobacco Prevention and Education Program at UAM is currently working to revise our smoke-free policy to include e-cigarette smoking,” she said.
“Once revised, it will be submitted to the executive council for approval.”
Arkansas Tech spokesman Sam Strasner said that school “does not have a policy against the use of e-cigarettes.”
“There are no plans at this time for Arkansas Tech to adopt a policy regarding e-cigarettes,” Strasner said in an email.
UALR also has no policy against e-cigarettes, spokesman Judy Williams said.
“UALR’s current policy is aimed at protecting nonsmokers from the dangers of secondhand smoke,” she added. “The university would revisit the policy if there wassignificant desire to do so by our personnel or students. At this point, we’re not aware of much discussion on the subject.”
At UA-Fayetteville, spokesman Steve Voorhies said, “All tobacco products are banned at the University of Arkansas.”
“Policy went into effect July 1, 2008. Applies to e-cigarettes,” he wrote in an email.
Voorhies said the Fayetteville campus’s ban “was based on the health dangers of tobacco, rather than on any particular delivery system.”
In Jonesboro, ASU System spokesman Jeff Hankins said state law “prohibits smoking on all university property including buildings, grounds and vehicles.”
In an email, Hankins added, “We have no system policy that addresses smoking on campus, but each campus has operating procedures that address tobacco use. Each campus currently bans e-cigarettes not by policy, but by operating procedures.
“Arkansas State’s operating language says: ‘Effective August 1, 2010, smoking (including cigarettes, cigars and pipes) is prohibited at all times,’” he said, referring to the system’s Jonesboro campus.
“The Jonesboro campus has encountered a couple of e-cigarette users and asked them to refrain from smoking, but generally we have had no issues,” Hankins wrote.
Asked if students or employees using e-cigarettes on campus would be within their rights and not violating campus policy, Hankins replied, “No. State law prohibits smoking on all university property including buildings, grounds and vehicles.”
Hankins added, “Everyone is forced to interpret a state law that doesn’t specifically address the e-cigarette product. But campuses still have the right to adopt operating procedures governing tobacco use.”
The survey did not cover two-year colleges, but Hankins said one of ASU’s two-year schools, ASU-Mountain Home, “specifically included a ban on e-cigarettes in its Faculty Handbook” this year.
“The language says: ‘ASUMH is a tobacco-freecampus. All forms of tobacco, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, cigars, and pipes are prohibited on campus.”
According to the UAPB office that deals with smoking and tobacco cessation, the university’s smoke-free campus resolution implemented in 2008 does not include e-cigarettes but says UAPB will “strive to teach, model and create an environment that will keep our students safe and healthy as well as intellectually stimulated.”
An employee has been working with UAPB’s “Faculty/Staff Handbook Revision Committee to include a comprehensive policy to include e-cigarettes,” Marian S. Evans-Lee, program coordinator for the Minority Initiative Sub-Recipient Grant Office, said in an email.
UA-Fort Smith’s student handbook states in part, “The use of any tobacco product, including electronic cigarettes, is prohibited on the grounds of UAFS in accordance with Arkansas State Law,” according to spokesman Sondra LaMar.
The faculty handbook has a similar provision but does not include the state-law reference. Rather, that provision says in part, “Smoking and the use of tobacco products (including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, cigars, pipes, smokeless tobacco and other tobacco products) by students, faculty, staff and visitors are prohibited on all UA Fort Smith properties.”
During the regular legislative session earlier this year, state Rep. Fredrick Love, D-Little Rock, filed a House bill that would have banned e-cigarettes at schools, but his proposal wasn’t specific on whether it referred to secondary or higher education. Another bill banning them in secondary schools passed, but it did not apply to colleges and universities.
Love said the intent during that session was to deal only with secondary schools, but he said he probably will “end up looking at some legislation” to deal with e-cigarettes on the college level.
“It might cause a stir,” Love added. “It was a compelling issue for kids not to [use e-cigarettes] because we know [they are] a gateway to smoking. Would it be that compelling … for people who are old enough … to buy [them]?” he asked.
Still, he said, “This may be something that we just didn’t think about” in 2009. “I guess it was like a technicality that we didn’t include e-cigarettes.”
Love said he wants to see what higher education thinksabout extending the ban to e-cigarettes.
“If higher education looks at banning it, then I would very much be in support of that,” he said.
A Nov. 13 letter to UCA’s Courtway from Randy Pastor, medical director of the university’s student health clinic, noted that the committee reviewing e-cigarettes was recommending that UCA prohibit use of the devices on campus.
Pastor wrote: “Although the immediate effects on humans of direct or secondhand nicotine vapors emitted by electronic cigarette devices are presently unknown, thereis a large concern by the medical community, and other regulating agencies, about the long-term effects of these devices on human health.”
Pastor’s letter said two other Arkansas public universities had “added wording to their existing policies to prohibit the use of electronic cigarettes on their university property.”
It was unclear if he was referring to UA-Fort Smith and ASU-Mountain Home because he could not be reached for comment. UCA was closed for winter break, and Pastor does not have a home phone number listed in Conway directory assistance.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/29/2013