Lloyd Houlden of Vancouver smokes a cigarette Friday in front of the Clark County Center for Community Health. The campus will be tobacco-free beginning Sunday.
The air on Clark County’s Center for Community Health campus will be a little cleaner beginning Sunday.
Visitors to the center will no longer have to walk through pockets of cigarette smoke to reach the building’s front doors once the center implements its tobacco-free campus policy this weekend.
The change has been a topic of discussion since the building on Fourth Plain Boulevard opened in 2006, said Geoff Knapp, community services spokesman. But the county building sits on federal property — Vancouver’s Veterans Affairs campus — so getting permission to ban tobacco took some time, Knapp said.
The building’s tenants decided about a year ago to go tobacco-free May 1.
“It seemed that we were overdue to have a tobacco-free policy where public health resides,” Knapp said.
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The new policy prohibits the use of cigarettes, chewing tobacco or any other tobacco products on the campus, including inside vehicles. Currently, smokers are allowed to smoke on the grounds but must be 25 feet away from doors, windows and ventilation intakes.
The new policy does not extend to the VA facilities.
People enrolled in Lifeline Connections’ inpatient drug and alcohol treatment program in the building will be allowed to smoke in a designated area behind the building. Those patients will be prohibited from smoking on campus in the future, but the date hasn’t been set. Lifeline employees and outpatients will not be allowed to smoke on campus, he said.
Program officials requested more time to complete tobacco cessation training before the change, Knapp said.
Clark County Public Health research found that nearly 80 percent of patients receiving substance-dependence treatment at the center smoke cigarettes.
Despite the high smoking rate among the clientele, about one-third of clients are in favor of a smoke-free campus policy. About 10 percent of the 500 employees at the center smoke, and more than half of all employees support the policy change, according to the research.
“The overriding sentiment of (employees) here was it was unfair for anybody coming here for services, like the WIC (Women, Infant and Children) program and some of the others coming in and having to avoid smokers,” Knapp said.
Public Health staff members have volunteered to patrol the grounds once the policy changes. They will educate violators about the change and offer them information about smoking cessation, Public Health Director John Wiesman said.
In addition, as clients go through intake for programs at the center they will be informed of the policy, he said.
The department is pursuing a contract for a security service company to patrol the grounds. Monitoring tobacco use on campus and asking people to comply with the rules will be among its duties, Wiesman said.
“What we’re asking people to do is just respect other people and the policies in place,” Knapp said.
The Center for Community Health is the first county campus to implement a tobacco-free policy, Knapp said. County officials have no plans to implement similar policies at other campuses, he said.
