{"id":20651,"date":"2018-02-09T13:14:15","date_gmt":"2018-02-09T18:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/?p=20651"},"modified":"2018-02-21T14:34:07","modified_gmt":"2018-02-21T19:34:07","slug":"done-utc-senior-al-douglas-led-chatt-states-smoke-free-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/2018\/02\/done-utc-senior-al-douglas-led-chatt-states-smoke-free-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Been There, Done That: UTC senior Al Douglas led Chatt State’s smoke-free plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

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UTC student Al Douglas was president of the Student Government Association at Chatt State when that campus went smoke-free two years ago.<\/p><\/div>\n

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It was the photos of the cigarette butts that did it.<\/p>\n

As president of the Student Government Association at Chattanooga State Community College, Al Douglas was pushing hard to institute a smoke-free campus policy on campus. Student surveys had gone out, coming back with an unambiguous response: Get rid of smoking on campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver half of them wanted a smoke-free campus, about 67 percent,\u201d says Douglas, now a senior in political science at UTC. \u201cOf the smokers, over 20 percent also wanted a smoke-free campus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with educational seminars from the Hamilton County Health Department, local hospitals and other medical groups, Douglas came up with a more direct approach to get students\u2019 attention: He had photographs taken of all the cigarette butts on Chatt State\u2019s grounds, then turned them into a slideshow.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was 30 minutes straight, picture after picture after picture of cigarette butts,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n

Chatt State is now smoke-free and has been since the first of 2016.<\/p>\n

Having gone through an extended education process before Chatt State completely banned cigarettes, cigars, pipes and vaping from campus, Douglas has some advice on how UTC can implement SmokeFree UTC, its yearlong push before going smokeless on Jan. 1, 2019.<\/p>\n