Duke University will become a smoke-free campus beginning in July 2020. The new policy has been in the works for several years, but the addition of electronic cigarettes and vaping products is relatively new.
The non-combustible nicotine products came under increased scrutiny in the fall of 2019 following a national outbreak of vaping-related deaths that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention later named EVALI, which stands for e-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung injury.
Campus reaction has been mixed, both among students and faculty. While eight members of the faculty wrote an opinion piece urging the university to add vaping to the smoking ban, one prominent voice was among those opposed: Jed Rose, director of the Duke Center for Smoking Cessation.
Host Anita Rao talks to Dr. James Davis and Maya Miller about the decision-making process behind the policy, how it will be enforced and student reaction to the ban. Davis is the director of the Duke Smoking Cessation Program and Miller is a sophomore staff writer at The Chronicle, Duke’s independent student newspaper.
CORRECTION: On March 2, this story was corrected to read that Jed Rose was "among those" opposed to adding vaping to the smoking ban. Three other Duke faculty members as well as other tobacco research experts joined him in opposing the ban on e-cigarettes and vaping products.
