University Reports on Smoking

A month before Cambridge's new anti-smoking ordinance goes into effect, Harvard's No-Smoking Guidelines Committee has released its recommendations for University compliance with the legislation.

The report urges all Harvard faculties and departments located in Cambridge to create their own committee to carry out the ordinance; post "No Smoking" signs; remove public ashtrays; and hold open meetings on smoking policy, according to Robert Saltonstall, Jr., the University's associate vice-president for operations and chairman of the committee.

Saltonstall said that smoking on campus may have to be severely limited when the ordinance goes into effect on March 9. The University lacks enough adequately ventilated space to provide separate smoking rooms in most buildings, he said.

The city's measure--the strictest of its kind in the state--bans smoking in public places throughout Cambridge. It also makes smoking illegal in workplaces except for designated areas where the smoke will not disturb other workers. The ordinance does not alter regulations already in effect for the city's restaurants, which require that only one-quarter of all seating remain kept smoke-free.

No Enforcement Power

Saltonstall said the committee has no power to implement its proposals.

"We are not legislating on how the departments or faculties must act," he said. "We are recommending."

The body, though, will "try to recommend enough in advance of the ordinance so that we can be a resource of reasonable expertise to faculties and departments," he said.

He said it also recommends that University Health Services expand its "cessation programs" to help smokers kick the habit, and encourage the departments to set up similar programs of their own.

The committee has also announced plans to hold a University-wide meeting to discuss the ordinance with smokers before March 9. "We are striving to identify and solve our own problems and avoid the city's enforcement," Saltonstall said.

The committee, he said, has not yet established a University procedure to hear complaints about new smoking policies.

Smoking has already been banned at the Kennedy School, except for two smoking areas in entryways. The Schools of Education and of Public Health have also established smoking policies. However, the rest of the campus has not yet adopted rules on smoking.

An official at the Kennedy School's Institute for the Study of Smoking Behavior and Policy said there have been few problems with enforcing the school's smoking ban.

"The policy is self-enforced and smokers have generally been very cooperative and understanding," said Andrea M. Berman, a research assistant at the Institute who was an adviser to the committee. "The policies are not to make people quit smoking, but to ask people not to smoke on the job because of the health threat of second-hand smoke [to colleagues]."

The committee report did not address smoking in dormitory rooms and private offices. "Those problems are sticky ones because it is very hard to tell someone that they can't smoke in their private space, but they have to understand that their behavior affects other people because the ventilation is recirculated throughout the building," said Berman.

The No-Smoking Policy Committee consists of facilities heads from each Cambridge faculty or department; a representative from Harvard Real Estate; and one from the central personnel department.