Building support for a tobacco-free campus policy in Eastern North Carolina

The NC General Assembly historically limited the powers of the public University of North Carolina System and its 16 constituent universities to regulate tobacco products on campus. Campuses could not meaningfully regulate smoking until January 1, 2008, when NCGA SL 2007-114 provided UNC campuses the ability to adopt tobacco-free policies to 100 linear feet of all buildings. At that time, ECU’s Director of Public Safety, Bill Koch, led an effort in collaboration with ECU Human Resources to adopt a stronger policy. This effort resulted in a smoke-free health sciences campus and a 25-foot smoke-free perimeter policy on the rest of campus. This policy remained in effect from August 14, 2008, to June 30, 2019. Documented in this Dataverse are efforts funded by the American Cancer Society on ECU's campus from a Tobacco-Free Generation Campus Initiative Grant to ECU (PI: Joseph Lee) that resulted in a new regulation on use of tobacco products on campus.