The Smoke-Free Campus Act, a proposal that would ban smoking on the property of state-funded institutions, is on its way to the full Senate after a higher education committee passed the measure Tuesday.

After the Senate reconvenes on April 10 following its spring break, they are expected to vote on the act at any time, said Shana Harrison, a representative from the American Lung Association and graduate student.

The proposal, first backed by Sen. Terry Link, D-Waukegan, would prohibit smoking on public University property starting July 2014 and would require state institutions to establish a task force that would be in charge of overseeing implementation by Dec. 31, 2014.

This proposal comes as the University is preparing to go smoke-free this November. The smoke-free campus policy will mean that smoking will no longer be allowed anywhere on campus. There will also be no designated smoking areas.

Both the Urbana-Champaign and Chicago campuses have taken initiatives prior to this proposal, said Thomas Hardy, University of Illinois system spokesman.

“(The state law would) establish an outright prohibition at public universities,” Hardy said. “If the law were to be enacted, I think that the campuses would be already ahead of it in terms of implementing a policy like that.”

The Chicago campus has announced a tobacco-free campus, which would prohibit any tobacco product, this coming July.

“Both campuses are ahead of what is being proposed in Springfield,” Hardy said. “It doesn’t matter what happens in Springfield; that proposal may not succeed.”

Springfield lawmakers approved the proposal 7-5 after hearing testimony in favor of the measure from Harrison.

“I focused on how the University of Illinois went smoke-free and what we did on our campus to go smoke-free,” Harrison said. “ I took the research that we know to be true (regarding the danger of smoking) and went to implement it in our policy.”

Harrison said she has worked with the American Lung Association because they wanted to present Springfield lawmakers with a student perspective from a campus that will be smoke-free by November 2013.

“What this allows is that universities who are having trouble going smoke-free, it would allow them to go smoke-free,” Harrison said.

Paul Palian, Northern Illinois University spokesman, said each Illinois university has their own approach to the proposal if it were to be enacted. Several other states such as Iowa, Arkansas and Oklahoma have implemented laws similar to those proposed in Illinois.

“Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death and is the cause of one in five deaths in the United States,” Palian said in an email. “Northern Illinois University does and will continue to comply fully with state smoking laws.”

Eric Jome, Illinois State University spokesman, said the university has already taken initiatives similar to the UI campuses. He said the campus instituted a more restrictive smoking policy in January, prohibiting smoking in the quad area and any large public area as well. This policy was brought about by student surveys on health and student issues. 

“Respondents said they would like to see no smoking areas expanded,” Jome said. “A year and a half ago we took this up and formulated a plan to make the no smoking areas more restrictive. The student government association worked with academic senate, and it went through all of the shared government bodies on campus.” 

As far as the proposal, from a legislation standpoint, Jome shared that ISU will stand by it.

“Students would like to see no smoking areas expanded, it has gotten a fair amount of response and a lot of campuses are starting to move this way,” Jome said. “It’s a larger trend that public institutions are going to anyway.”

However, unlike the University’s plan, ISU accommodates students who do smoke. The university has designated smoking areas, away from large concentrations of people. Around the campus, there are also expanded maps telling students where to smoke.

Each university has a different approach to dealing with smoking on campus. However, with this proposal all state institutions will be regulated under the same act.

“The legislators, I assume, have the same rationale and motive to have a policy that impacts all public facilities in Illinois,” Hardy said. “The same rationale and motives were behind the initiatives behind the Urbana and Chicago campuses in their policies. Sometimes it’s just harder to get those policies in Springfield as opposed to putting together committees and task forces on a campus and come up with a policy for an individual school.”

Liz can be reached at [email protected].