CSU’s, community colleges smoking bill passed

Louis LaVenture,
Editor-in-Chief

  The days of lighting up a cigarette and vaping could be a thing of the past at all 23 of the California State University system campuses, and 113 California community colleges.

On Monday, the California State Legislature passed Assembly Bill 1594, 41-23, which would ban the use of tobacco, e-cigarettes and vaping devices on all CSU and California community college campuses. The bill will now go to the Senate, who will decide its ultimate fate sometime next month. The passing of the bill comes on the heels of a move to increase the smoking age in California to 21 from 18, a bill which passed in assembly last month and is currently awaiting a decision by Governor Jerry Brown.

Currently, six of the 23 CSUs already are established as smoke-free campuses, which include San Francisco State, Cal State Monterey Bay and Cal State Fullerton. In 2014, all of the campuses in the University of California system became smoke-free campuses, leading the way for the CSU ban.

Community colleges like Chabot College in Hayward and Laney College in Oakland will also be affected by the ban. Several of California’s community colleges have already implemented smoking bans. However, like the CSU’s, there is no system wide policy in place.

The CSU Chancellor’s Office, led by Timothy White and the Board of Trustees, declined to provide a stance on the smoke-free campus issue, according to the Sacramento Bee.