EDUCATION / OUSTING TOBACCO : Schools Stamping Out Smoking With Only a Spark of Opposition

In Flagstaff, Ariz., a receptionist for the school district hailed its fledgling no-tobacco policy as her best hope for finally kicking cigarettes.

In Denver, a frustrated teacher--a longtime heavy smoker--protested no longer being allowed to have a cigarette in the faculty lounge but promised to comply with his district’s new rules. And in the San Juan Unified School District near Sacramento, it was the employee groups who pushed for banishing tobacco from district buildings, grounds and vehicles.

When the 626,000-student Los Angeles Unified School District becomes “tobacco free” on Nov. 15--banning the use of such products anywhere on district property or at school-sponsored events--it will find plenty of company, especially among suburban or small-town districts.

LITTLE OPPOSITION: In the last two or three years, rules aimed at achieving smoke-free elementary and secondary campuses have been enacted from Orlando, Fla., to Simi Valley, Calif.--with only modest pockets of opposition from district employees and practically none from parents who liked to smoke at football games and other school-sponsored events. Even the tobacco industry, which usually mobilizes at the first whiff of anti-smoking proposals, has stayed out of the way of campaigns to ban its products at schools.

The campaigns are aided by mounting medical evidence of tobacco’s serious health effects, including from so-called second-hand smoke, and by indications that tobacco is a “gateway” substance that can start the youngest smokers down the road to illegal drug use. They are also helped by social pressure against smoking and by a desire to provide better role models for youngsters.

According to a survey last year by the National School Boards Assn., 17% of school districts nationwide banned tobacco use entirely, contrasted with just 2% in 1986. New Jersey, Kansas, Utah and New Hampshire have required that all their schools be tobacco-free, to be joined next year by Washington state, an official of the Tobacco Free America Project said. The project is run by the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Assn. and the American Lung Assn., the agencies that are spearheading the drive to boot tobacco off campus.

School tobacco bans “are definitely increasing . . . this is the easiest, most obvious move to make,” said Diane Maple of the Lung Assn., which, like its two sister agencies, offers advice and stop-smoking programs to school boards considering such bans.

“After all, schools are about children, and who can argue about that?” Maple said.

INDUSTRY QUIET: The Tobacco Institute, which has battled regulations from restaurants to airliners on grounds that they trample the rights of smokers, is conspicuously absent from school board debates.

“We don’t (lobby school boards) because children are involved,” said Tobacco Institute spokesman Thomas Lauria, who denounced the comprehensive bans on campus tobacco use for “treating teachers like children.” Nonetheless, the industry, fighting accusations that it is trying to recruit new smokers, is “not going to go on record to defend policies that affect children,” he said.

Most of the school bans have been enacted after communitywide campaigns, are accompanied by stop-smoking help and have either several months’ lead time before enforcement or have been phased in slowly.

Orlando’s 103,000-student Orange County Public Schools led the state of Florida when it enacted its ban in February, 1989, but the policy will not take full effect until next fall, when new teachers union contracts are in place, district spokeswoman Diane Taylor said. So far, the bans do not appear to have led any of the districts that pioneered them into stormy legal waters.

RULE OF REASON: Most districts said they try to be reasonable about enforcement. As one California superintendent put it: “We’re not arresting the parent who steps behind the bleachers and lights up at a football game.”

In Flagstaff, whose tobacco-free policy grew from discontent over the smoke-laden faculty lounges that also doubled as staff workrooms, Supt. Bill Williams said compliance is generally good.

“We’re trying not to be obnoxious about it, and we are as soft in our approach as (the few backsliding smokers) allow us to be.”

Allan Jacobs, Simi Valley’s associate superintendent, said the district’s policy has more pluses than minuses.

“We do have some teachers who sit in their cars or go across the street to smoke,” Jacobs said, “but it’s really minimal.”