Boston bans tobacco sales on college campuses

    Boston students who are interested in buying tobacco products may not find it so easy to do anymore. As of Feb. 9, college campus stores and pharmacies have been ordered to remove tobacco products from their shelves — a move the Boston Public Health Commission approved last year.
    The commission also made adjustments to Boston's 2002 workplace smoking ban by prohibiting smoking in nearby outdoor areas, banning new smoking bars such as hookah and cigar bars and giving current smoking bars 10 years to remain open.
    "The Boston Public Health Commission has the feeling that places that are supposed to be protecting our health, as in pharmacies with over-the-counter products — places that you should reasonably rely on to make you healthier — should not also be selling tobacco products," Edith Balbach, a community health senior lecturer, said.
    The commission hopes that the new ban will prevent many college students from smoking, because tobacco products will not be as readily available.
    "For the most part, if people are going to start smoking they start before they're 19 years old, so one of the key times of smoking uptake is the first year out of high school," Balback said. "For [about] 25 percent of the population that is their first year in college, so the thought was to put one more barrier in front of smoking uptake for 19-year-olds. If you have to actually physically leave campus to go find cigarettes, that is one additional barrier in the environment to try to get people to stop smoking — or even better, to just not start."
    While the potential positive health effects of the ban are encouraging, some feel that the strategy of banning certain things from students is not appropriate and will not be effective.
    "I think anything that prevents students from smoking is a good thing, but on the other hand, students should be allowed to buy what they want," freshman Adam Shepro said.
    Balbach agrees that restricting students could be risky.
    "The U.S. has a very libertarian philosophy — anything I want to do to my body I get to do to my body," she said. "Not allowing alcohol consumption by people under 21 has not been effective in preventing the use of alcohol in college dorms. We all have this basic libertarian instinct to want something badly that we can't have. So I always worry a little bit about specifically restricting certain things."
    One different and potentially more effective way of approaching the tobacco problem, according to Balbach, might be to try to persuade students that they don't want tobacco, by doing such things as broadcasting its negative health effects.
    "In public health, there are supply-side strategies and demand-side strategies," Balbach explained. "Supply-side means you try to interrupt the product from getting to the person, and demand-side strategies stop the person from wanting the product. I'm a real believer in demand-side strategies. If you handed me a pack of cigarettes right now, I would not take them. It's not the supply of cigarettes that makes the difference in my case; I have no demand for them.
    "I think the strongest policies we have in public health area are … the ones that convince people that they don't want the product," Balbach continued. "The strategies that try to stop the product from getting to the people I tend to think are much less effective. Those haven't worked all that well with cocaine, marijuana or any of those drugs. It's a much harder thing to do because if you have willing providers and consumers, you tend to have people getting the products."
    Demand-side tobacco prevention strategies are no stranger to the Bay State.
    "Massachusetts used to have one of the best tobacco control programs in the country, until the legislature gutted it," Balbach said. "It had a very effective media campaign, and even on TV now you see some of that truth campaign, so media campaigns are very effective."
    Another venue the government can pursue to reduce tobacco sales is a tax.
    "Tobacco tax increases are also very effective, because they make the product so expensive that you don't want it," Balbach said. "Also, making dorms and offices smoke-free, those are the things that are effective, because you create an environment for the product in which people can't use it. Those are all considered demand-side strategies."
    Balbach does feel, however, that the recent tobacco ban will be effective on campuses in preventing a lot of the positive tobacco advertising that is often ubiquitous in convenience stores and markets.
    "I think that not having sales on college campuses is probably a really good idea because as soon as convenience stores start selling cigarettes, they blast students with tobacco ads on all sides," she said. "Pro-advertising companies for cigarette sales are problematic, so from that standpoint I think it's useful not to have tobacco on college campuses."
    Although many students will inevitably be angry about the ban, the effects on Tufts will likely be minimal, especially since the on-campus convenience store, Jumbo Express, stopped selling cigarettes long prior to the recent policy changes.
    On a whole, smoking is also not as popular on college campuses as it used to be, according to Balbach.
    "Smoking follows an educational and social class gradient. College students are not a population that smokes a lot, so it's not a big deal to them. I think they are more aware of the health effects, and I think that there's probably more stigma associated with being a smoker," she said. "I think it's perceived as a negative behavior. When I was in high school … smoking still had that cool cache, but I don't think among this generation smoking is perceived as cool. The idea that smoking is the rebel behavior is long past … you guys have different ideas of what rebel behavior is."