No smoking within ten feet

In June 2007, a law was passed increasing the number of indoor workplaces required to be smoke-free. It also prohibited smoking within 10 feet of public entrances and air vents. The law was put into effect Jan. 1, 2009, and Western is working to make sure that the campus complies with the new restrictions. Tom Neal, the Director of the Physical Plant, said, "We are in the process of installing more signs as requested by the building managers. Allen Risen has been working on it since the new law went into effect." Risen, Safety Manager at Western's Physical Plant Services, said, "Each building will now have a 'No smoking within 10 feet' sticker placed on all building exterior doors and air intake vents." Before the new "Smokefree Workplace" Law went into effect, some of the campus building managers had posted their own no smoking signage on their buildings' exterior doors, Risen said. For example, a sign near the Werner University Center asked smokers to maintain a 40-foot distance from entrances. With the law now in effect, however, the pressure is off of building managers and is placed on the smokers themselves. "I'm on two sides of the new smoke-free laws in Oregon," said James Williams, freshman. "If I didn't smoke, I wouldn't want anyone blowing smoke in my face either. But on the other hand, walking past smokers outside every once and a while as you leave a building isn't going to give you cancer 20 years down the road." Cathryn Cushing, the Communications Manager for the Tobacco Prevention and Education Program at the Oregon Department of Human Services has seen mostly a positive response to the new law and "a lot of media attention." "It's an interesting thing for college campuses," said Cushing. "It helps decrease college student exposure to second-hand smoke." Regardless of the responses, the new law requires smokers to maintain at least 10 feet of distance from public entrances across the state. Cushing said, "It affects college students just like it affects everyone else."