SUNY Oswego to Become Tobacco-Free Jan. 1, 2015

SUNY Oswego will make the healthy choice and go tobacco free on Jan. 1, 2015, everywhere on campus, including tobacco use in any vehicle on college premises.

The campus-wide Clean Air Committee has been meeting to discuss this issue since fall 2011 and has considered the results of a campus-wide survey, focus groups and discussions with peer schools that are among the nearly 1,200 tobacco-free campuses nationwide.

The committee has reviewed extensive research from the Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Surgeon General, NY Quits and American Cancer Society. One among many numbers stands out: Smokers understand the dangers, and nearly 70 percent report that they want to quit.

“SUNY Oswego takes this opportunity to make a dramatic but well-supported statement on behalf of all college citizens: No degree of secondhand smoke is safe, no amount of smoking-related pollution is acceptable, and any form of tobacco use is damaging to health and is highly addictive,” says College President Deborah F. Stanley.

“In an effort to support the educational mission of the college and to provide a safe, clean and healthy working, living and learning environment, the college will provide cessation assistance and resources to members of the campus community who wish to stop smoking or using tobacco in any form,” she says. “We’ll also support exercise and nutritional changes to help all of us enjoy the vitality and freedom that a smoke- and tobacco-free lifestyle affords.”

To find helping resources online and to view the college’s complete tobacco-free rationale, the upcoming new policy on tobacco use, links to resources, research and other support to help us count down to 2015, visit oswego.edu/OzQuits.

—The Office of Public Affairs

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