Submission: Tobacco-free policy to make campus healthier

The original version of this article contained an error and has been changed. See the bottom of the article for additional information.

UCLA’s tobacco-free policy isn’t about restricting individual choice. It’s about saving lives.

As chair of UCLA’s Tobacco-Free Steering Committee, I was dismayed to see an op-ed in the Daily Bruin suggesting that UCLA is somehow the bad guy at a time when tobacco companies are finding ever-sneakier ways to manipulate college students into forming deadly addictions. After decades of caring for patients affected by tobacco use and assisting smokers in quitting, one of my goals as chair is that the new policy be sensitive to tobacco users’ needs and the difficulties they will face.

When UCLA follows the lead of more than 1,000 other campuses and goes tobacco-free on April 22, the university will provide significant resources to help tobacco users quit and cope with nicotine withdrawal.

To help tobacco users, UCLA has partnered with the California Smokers’ Helpline, which provides free evidence-based cessation counseling for tobacco users. UCLA will also provide free two-week nicotine replacement therapy starter kits, available at Occupational Health and at the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center. Counseling is available at UCLA, including at the Ashe Center and the Freedom From Smoking program at the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine.

Tobacco users who use a combination of medication and counseling are more likely to successfully quit than those who try to quit cold turkey. These strategies will also help tobacco users deal with unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. These symptoms can be mistaken as stress rather than needing a nicotine fix, but even nonsmokers experience stress about exams and all-nighters.

If there is one thing that we have learned after decades of research on tobacco use, it’s that this is not about “individual choice,” as some have suggested. Millions of people become addicted because of campaign efforts by the tobacco industry, not through individual decisions. Cigarettes kill about 50 percent of those long-term smokers who use the product as intended.

Two-thirds of smokers consistently report that they want to quit. Although UCLA’s policy does not require smokers or tobacco-users to quit, evidence shows that tobacco-free environments increase tobacco users’ success in quitting.

A tobacco-free campus is the best way to protect nonsmokers from secondhand smoke, but also to minimize the behavioral cues for tobacco use that make it extremely difficult for tobacco users who wish to quit.

Tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke are the leading causes of preventable death in the United States – by encouraging quit attempts, this policy will save the lives of not only those exposed to secondhand smoke, but those using tobacco, too.

There is no safe level of tobacco use or exposure, and UCLA will have no designated smoking areas. Tobacco use is legal, but like gambling or alcohol use, it can be limited. Times are changing, and just as smokers and tobacco users have learned to manage their nicotine withdrawal in restaurants or long airplane flights, those who choose not to quit will also need to manage their symptoms on campus.

The tobacco-free policy will primarily focus on education. The policy will not shame people for smoking or require fines, and I would question the contention that smokers will consider it a hardship not to litter on our neighbors’ property should they continue to smoke off-campus.

Members of the Tobacco-Free Steering Committee understand the skepticism about the ban on e-cigarettes. However, the small studies that have been done on electronic cigarettes show a reckless variation in their contents, with inconsistent levels of nicotine – or sometimes none at all – while others contain hazardous materials.

We want to steer tobacco users toward safe, proven methods for quitting and managing cravings. Despite containing the drug nicotine, e-cigarettes are unregulated, unapproved by the FDA and not proven to help with quitting or cravings.

The entire UC system will go tobacco-free by January 2014. UCLA will lead in this effort by going tobacco-free on April 22, becoming one of more than 1,000 colleges and universities in saving lives by making smoke-free or tobacco-free the new normal.

Sarna is a professor at the UCLA School of Nursing, chair of the Tobacco-Free Steering Committee and an oncology nurse.

Correction: Linda Sarna’s last name was misspelled in the byline.