No-Smoking Bill Hacks Off Schools, Their Neighbors Residents Say State Law Merely Pushes Problem Onto Their Property
A bill in the Legislature to beef up a statewide smoking ban at public schools worries Cheney High School’s neighbors.
The neighborhood wants teenage smokers to light up on campus - not on the street, not in their yards.
Neighbors and school leaders worked out a solution last month. For the first time since the 1991 ban, students now smoke on campus in a designated area outdoors, under the bleachers behind the new gym.
The school board will evaluate the experiment next month.
Neighbors had complained of 80 to 100 students milling around on streets, sidewalks and lawns. The teens honked their car horns, squealed their tires, trampled flower beds and left behind candy wrappers and cigarette butts.
The new on-campus smoking area solved the problems, said neighbor Joy Scott.
“The street is just empty by comparison. There’s no one out there now.”
Scott said lawmakers should “come down and see what’s going on” before they vote on a proposal authored by Rep. John Koster, R-Arlington.
House Bill 2121 would require school districts to enforce the law and create penalties for breaking it.
The bill would tighten a loophole allowing smoking at alternative schools. Cheney High, which has an alternative program, used the loophole to permit its smoking area.
Mead High School, north of Spokane, does not have an alternative program under its roof, but allows smoking in one section of campus.
“Why punish me for a habit our society has allowed these kids to develop?” asked Mead Principal Steve Hogue. “They’ve made it exclusively a school problem and I resent that.”
Hogue decided to “stop playing this game” and send smokers to a campus corner, rather than watch them dodge five lanes of traffic to satisfy their nicotine cravings. Neighbors also complained of students hanging around their property.
“I think it’s totally asinine to have hypocritical laws. This is a perfect example of one,” Hogue said.
Schools that blatantly break the law send the wrong message, Koster said.
“They should come down and lobby us to change that law instead of breaking the law,” Koster said. “Don’t give me a bunch of garbage about being hypocritical when they’re the hypocrites.”
Mark Sterk, R-Spokane Valley, and Cathy McMorris, R-Colville, co-sponsored Koster’s bill.
State law prohibits children under 18 from buying tobacco, but doesn’t mention using it. Until police can cite teens for smoking, Hogue doesn’t think schools should have that duty.
“It’s not our problem. We didn’t create it. Don’t expect us to cure it without a prohibition on use,” Hogue said.
, DataTimes