Tobacco.org

Smoking ban returns mixed results  

There have been nearly 50 violations of the newly implemented smoking ban in residence halls as of Monday - a surprisingly high number, university officials said.

"It was higher than I thought it would be," said Tom Ellett, assistant vice president for residential education.

Beginning this fall semester, a smoking policy prohibits students from smoking in NYU residence halls, mainly out of concern for students' health, university spokesman John Beckman said. Previously, students who identified themselves as smokers could be put into smoking rooms and live only with other students who opted to live in smoking rooms.

But the 48 violations were surprising to Ellett, who took part in implementing the policy at Syracuse University.

"I'm going to turn to the CDEs and RAs to be creative," Ellett said, referring to the ResEd staff. "The biggest influencer on peers, is peers. If they think it's cool to smoke, they'll smoke. If they don't think it's cool, they won't. You can apply this to just about anything."

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