
Every day, we hear that there are new laws, policies, restrictions, regulations, and rules. All of these words could be involved in what could help people's lives to be more ordered and regulated. In this case, we see a lot of people think that these things are not needed because that means that we are disrupting people's freedom. People think that their freedom should be without any limits or restrictions. This is exactly what is happening related to the tobacco free campus policy. Some people agree that this policy is effective and should be implemented, and some others are saying that we do not need this policy because we are restricting others from their habits or their freedom. 

Jessica Gross in her article about banning smoking says, "the unwitting second-hand smokers who don't think inhaling mouthfuls of smoke is fun. These people's freedoms aren't limited by smoking bans" (Gross). This shows a selfish position on the part of the smokers. It also indicates that the smokers' freedoms are not related or do not get effected when tobacco is banned in a campus. They still can smoke, just not on specific parts of the campus. Smokers might believe that they will not harm non-smokers. They think second hand smoke do not harm or that smoking will have no effect on someone's education. As everybody knows smoking is harmful to one's health and smokers are poisoning themselves. And that is one reason of why we should implement a tobacco free policy at all educational institutions. 

There are multiple reasons that make us claim that we need to implement a tobacco free campus policy in any campus around the world. Nowadays, there are many universities that are one hundred percent tobacco free campus. According to Megan Reed, in her article about tobacco free policies, " ... the report from ANRF, an educational nonprofit organization, says that over 1,500 campuses nationwide were 100% smoke-free as of July, with slightly over 1,000 being fully tobacco-free" (Reed). This shows that there is already a large amount of institutions that are tobacco free. Reed also states that these policies lead to a decline in freshman smokers. This would decrease the number of smokers in the college or university, which is a good result for students, staff, and all employees. The tobacco free policy represents students' health inside the campus and that makes a university's campus be successful. This policy brings a change in the culture as well as in the habits of people. Thus, the tobacco free campus policy should be implemented in order to solve the problem of tobacco around different campuses in the world.

Nowadays, in different countries around the world, a lot of universities are changing their campuses to a tobacco free campus. Tobacco free campus means that any kind of tobacco or smoking is prohibited (Reed). There are a lot of forms of tobacco and smoking. According to the website Ct.gov, there are many types of tobacco such as hookah, cigars, Kreteks, pipes, electronic cigarettes, dip, and many others (Ct.gov). In this case, many people smoke these different types but all of them are prohibited if a campus is tobacco free because all of them are tobacco. For our health, all of the kinds of the tobacco are harmful but the degree of how harmful they are differs. For example, the article "Which Brand of Cigarettes Are the Most Harmful?" mentions that all kinds of tobacco are harmful but the one that people smoke a lot is the one that will be harmful (Quara.com). That means that all kinds of tobacco are going to kill you if you do not want stop using it. Consequently, tobacco should be banned in general.

If the officials of any campus want smokers to quit, they actually have considered your health. Health comes before any other purposes of implementing the tobacco free policy. Most of the time, schools are worried about their students especially if they are teenagers because the health in this period of time is very important. Sometimes the students want to try anything that seems good to them, including tobacco. For example, if they see somebody smoking around them, they might try it out too. As a result, the tobacco free policy should be implemented so we can help our next generations to get rid of smoking.

 However, adult students are also exposed to smoke because "College campuses are a place where many people are adopting new behaviors" (Dickinson, 18). Therefore, a tobacco would be good because it helps students and adults at the university. So, the health in this case, comes first and it is the most fundamental reason to implement the tobacco free campus policy. In the same time there are a lot of concerns that any smoker should consider while he or she is smoking. For example, the cost of buying these cigarettes and the "social concerns" also should be taken into account. Smokers are not behaving the same as non-smokers, which means that they have to take into account negative perceptions towards them (Dickinson, 7). Additionally, this means that they have to learn from these perceptions to quit. 

In addition, implementing the tobacco free policy in any campus does a lot to students especially for those who are smoking but do not know how to quit. In an article talking about whether administrators need to ban smoking in campus or not, Hayley Dickinson says, "Research suggests that quit attempts among students and employees increased after the campus-wide tobacco-free policy took effect" (23). There are a lot of people who are trying to quit but they are struggling and in this case they have the chance to quit. Most of the time, the universities that are implementing the tobacco free policy have a lot of ways that could help smokers quit if they choose to. For instance, at the University of South Carolina there are some programs associated to help smokers stop smoking. "According to Campus Wellness director Michael Crowley, the program is 'designed to assess an individual's readiness to quit and provide them with the skills and resources to do so successfully'" (Pita). Some of the things this group does for students is give them places to talk about quitting smoking and people to talk with. Providing some programs to help students quit in any tobacco free campus is a very good technique since there are a lot of students who desire to stop smoking. In this case, to make the implementation of the policy be effective we need programs such as these to make the implementation supportive. 

Additionally, before talking about the way to quit or help smokers stop smoking, there are some ideas to think about, such as educating our children early on that smoking is bad and harmful to the body's health as well as to the environment. In this case, we have to think about some ways that could create the idea in the minds of children that assists them in avoiding smoking and get rid of smoking. One of the ways to put the thought in our children's minds is to create materials and subjects of schools' books in different stages of the education. In this way we put the child in the way of thinking that every type of tobacco could be able to destroy your life. Another way to help our generations get rid of tobacco is to create more of the entertainment forms like films and movies and make them without talking about any kind of tobacco. Also, we can make one of our jobs' requirements to not be a smoker. All of that could help our generation to be nonsmokers. 

All of these attempts to change the generation to be a better generation and to implement the policy of tobacco is the way to change the culture. So somebody could wonder more about the implementation of the new policy change and "to see how this policy change has impacted the university community and to see how our culture has changed." (Pita). Everybody knows that changing the culture is something very hard because first of all we need to change people's behaviors. According to Reginald Fennell in her article about the issue, she discusses that "behavior change is more complicated and depends on many factors, including if a person is ready to change and has the resources to make changes" (Fennell).  However, if we have the willingness and desire to follow the ways that were mentioned, every thing is going to be possible. For example, if we change behaviors about health, ethics, and morals, we might be able to develop more awareness about tobacco.

Moreover, implementing the new policy of tobacco in any educational institute could help make the campus seem ready and a real place for students to study. In other words, if we are walking inside the campus and smell smoke because somebody is smoking near to us, we are going to look at him and wonder of his purpose in coming to the campus. Also, we might consider this person as a bad because he is not friendly to the environment. He/she also might break out a fire just because he/she want to smoke inside campus. So in this case, the secondhand smoke is doing a lot to our respected campus as a place to study not to smoke and that is bothering the nonsmokers. According to the article "Tobacco Ban to Be Peer Enforced", Amanda Coyne says, "The policy is designed to encourage people to partake in healthier habits and reduce the effects of tobacco use on campus, including secondhand smoke." (Coyne). In this case, the secondhand smoke should be gotten rid of it by implementing the tobacco free policy. 

Furthermore, a majority of the time, the tobacco-free policy has some rules that come with it besides just banning smoking. For example, some universities prefer to implement the new policy but not to enforce the policy on smokers if they decide to smoke inside the campus. But some others do prefer to charge the violators of the policy. Because everybody knows the policy, everybody has to obey and do what it says. But there will be a lot of people who will not obey and that means that we have to implement enforcement so no more violators will break the rules. That is because "with-out a clearly de ned and actionable enforcement component, these policies serve little purpose" (Fennell). In addition to that Helen C. Russette in her article about the issue adds, "Effective enforcement of existing and new campus tobacco bans is necessary to realize the public health bene ts of the hard-won battles for new campus tobacco policies." (Russette). In order to make the tobacco free policy effective, officials of universities and colleges have to charge the violators of the policy. 

Nevertheless, there could be some other requirements from smokers to be disciplined on and some rules that the tobacco-free policy is based on such as smoking outside the campus. For example, Scranton officials at Marywood University say, "They walk off campus if they still want to smoke. They go down the street, and we've asked them not to litter (on nearby properties)," (Reed). Consequently, walking off campus is very important because it will lead campus safe from any bad smokes and have a clean air. In addition, putting some rules and requirements makes smokers start thinking that they are doing wrong and they could try to quit because they are asked to walk off campus every time they want to smoke. Dickson also states, "The cause for restricting tobacco on campus is not only to benefit the non-smokers, it is also to benefit those who smoke, and to encourage them to use tobacco-products less often, or even quit" (Dickinson). This shows that we can help smokers as well with these polices.

The implementation of the free-tobacco policy could also help students' future. For instance, the people who are smoking and they are thinking to quit; the new policy could help them quit and that will help them get a good job. That is because one requirement of many jobs is to be a nonsmoker. "Companies have also adopted smoke-free policies on jobsites in order to provide a healthier environment for all employees." (Dickinson). In addition to that, "one of the biggest benefits of the tobacco-free policy on campus has been preparing students with habits they will use when they join the workforce." (Pita). Thus, the tobacco-free campus policy has to be implemented according to what Dickinson states. 

On the other hand, there are a lot of people who still disagree with the new tobacco free policy. They have a lot of opinions and thoughts that they base their disagreement on. One of these thoughts is that if smokers want to smoke only one cigarette, they do not have to go outside the campus and smoke for a moment. Ari Finkelstein in her article about whether colleges should ban smoking or not says, "They must go off campus just to have a cigarette" (Finkelstein).  That indicates that "these bans will lead to students spending much more time off campus be harmful to their studies" (Finkelstein). In addition, people say that they do not want this policy to be implemented because not only do students smoke but also there are some staff and faculty who smoke. This can be seen when Finkelstein says, "And then there are the professors who smoke, many of whom live on campus and will unfairly be censured by the university for a habit that is within their legal rights" (Finkelstein). That means that if there are staff and faculty smokers, students are going to do the same, which means that the policy is doing nothing. Also, some others say that the officials of the campus should make some programs to help students quit instead of charging them. In an article about the University of South Carolina tobacco-free policy, the author says, "The Campus Wellness and Student Health programs will help students more than harassing them to put out their cigarettes." Thus, there are many people who still not agree with the tobacco-free campus policy. But the tobacco free policy is very important to any educational institution in the world and we have to implement even if some people disagree. 

As an example of the tobacco-free campus, the University of South Carolina has implemented the policy since 2014, and it is still going on. Coyne states, "The main thing to emphasize is that this is a culture change. We want to make a healthy campus environment. That is the main purpose of the policy" (Coyne). According to Natalie Pita in her article about the tobacco-free USC says, "In a spring 2014 wellness survey, 84 percent of faculty and staff members reported that they felt the policy has been effective" (Pita). As is seen in the campus, there is a decrease of using tobacco at the USC (Pita). The university has been providing some ways that help smokers quit. For example, "The pharmacy in Student Health Services also offers over-the-counter and prescription nicotine replacement options." (Pita). Also, the University Health Center and the wellness and fitness center do the same. Proof of this can be seen since a teacher of this University was talking about the policy and mentioned that officials and police will charge violators if they see them smoking inside the campus. This teacher said that if you want to smoke just go outside the campus but inside you cannot. Coyne disuses the punishment in her article "Tobacco Ban to Be Peer Enforced", saying that "If a student is reported a second time, he or she will face a $50 fine and complete an essay about how their tobacco use will affect them in the future" (Coyne). That means that the USC campus is changing for the best. 

In many countries, a lot of educational institutions are changing to be tobacco-free campuses. These institutes are changing to make the air in their campuses feel better. There could be a lot of students who will be smokers if there is no policy. Leon NeyfakhI in his article "How Cigarettes Became Uncool on Campus" tells that one of the students says, "I started buying cigarettes in the opening weeks of my freshman year." This person could be an example of what the effects are going to be if the tobacco free policy is not implemented. As a result, tobacco free policy does help students be away from tobacco. Also, the violators of the policy should be charged, which makes the policy work better. It could be difficult to implement this policy because it also means a change in culture, but because the officials could start the step from educating people, the policy could be effective. The purpose of the policy is to change the campus and the environment to make it more healthy than before. Some of the rules of the policy require students to go outside the campus to smoke. However, there are a lot of people who still do not agree with what the policy says because they think that smoking is the freedom of the people. Also, they think that this policy does harm more than benefit (Finkelstein). But we made the argument clear that we need to implement the tobacco free policy in any educational institution around the globe. 

