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University of Missouri to go smoke free July 1

A report says one in four US high schoolers smoke first cigarettes before turning 18.
Sudipto Sarkar
/
flickr
A report says one in four US high schoolers smoke first cigarettes before turning 18.

The University of Missouri announced Thursdsay that MU’s campus will become 100 percent smoke–free earlier than planned. The smoke-free date has been moved up from January 2014 to July next year. KBIA’s Maddie Heidenreich reports.

In July of last year, school officials announced a plan to completely ban smoking on school grounds by January 2014, but with today’s (Thursday) announcement the date will be bumped up by six months. The vice chancellor for MU Student Affairs, Cathy Scroggs, says MU may not be the first school to ban smoking on campus, but now the university can be in the fore-front of schools across the nation enacting smoke-free policies.   

“There are about eight hundred colleges and universities in our country that are about 100 percent smoke – free on campus, so we are certainly not the first, but we are not the last because there are over 3 thousand higher education institutions in the country,” said Scroggs.

MU alumnus Traci Kennedy says as a student, she worked to educate the campus about smoking risks. Kennedy says students’ voices prompted the change.

“A lot of those decisions came from the administration. The administration said, we are going to do this for our campus, and that’s not how it started here at Mizzou. That sends a really powerful message that it took a long time and several generations of students,” said Kennedy

Organizations like the MU Wellness Program and Student Health Center are planning support groups to help smokers through the transition into a smoke-free environment. 

Maddie Heidenreich, KBIA News.