IRVINE – UC Irvine will continue to allow the use of electronic cigarettes on campus even as the university begins enforcing a smoke-free environment today, a policy that contradicts a University of California edict to ban the nicotine-vapor product.

UCI was ordered by UC’s central office in Oakland to rid its campus of tobacco products and e-cigarettes by New Year’s Day. But unlike the nine other UC campuses that crafted policies banning all nicotine items, UCI’s new policy will let students and staff keep using e-cigarettes and chewing tobacco.

The university argues the health effects of e-cigarettes aren’t fully understood.

“It’s our understanding that each campus was given the autonomy to come up with its own policies, and our policy does have a provision that can prohibit e-cigarette use,” UCI spokesman Tom Vasich said in an email.

E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices typically shaped like a cigarette that produce chemical vapors infused with nicotine.

UC spokesman Steve Montiel in Oakland declined to comment on the Irvine policy, noting the UC system office was closed for the holidays.

Each of UC’s nine other campuses has banned all smoking, plus e-cigarettes and chewing tobacco, according to a review of the new policies posted to their websites.

UC Irvine senior Scott Ondap, the head of a campus anti-smoking club, said he was disappointed his school would be the only one in the UC system to continue letting students use e-cigarettes and chewing tobacco. More students are likely to start using e-cigarettes as a result, he said.

“It’s pretty ridiculous – we’re supposed to be the up-and-coming, health-oriented UC,” said Ondap, 22, a public health sciences major who is co-president of the Student Task Force Advocating Reducing Tobacco, or START. “But I’m glad we have at least something to start with.”

UCI has argued it is following the spirit of the UC directive, which mandated that smoking be banned in all indoor and outdoor areas of campus, including in one’s own car when it’s parked on campus. Previously, smoking was banned within 25 feet of a building’s perimeter.

“‘Smoke-free’ is the emphasis, considering the dangers of firsthand and second-hand cigarette smoke,” Vasich said by email.

UC’s Office of the President in Oakland says on its website that the new systemwide policy taking effect today “prohibits the use of cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cigars, snuff, snus, water pipes, pipes, hookahs, chew and any other noncombustible tobacco product.”

This policy “is being adopted by all UC campuses, labs and centers,” the UC website says.

Vasich emphasized that e-cigarettes emit vapors, not smoke. Also, he added, individual areas of the campus, such as an office or classroom, have the authority to ban e-cigarettes.

“When more scientific evidence is available that shows e-cigarettes are unhealthy, and that the vapor is unhealthy to others, the campus can further address the issue,” Vasich said in his email.

An estimated 7.9 percent of UC students have smoked in the past 30 days, according to UC data. Most of those students smoke a “low number” of cigarettes, UC said in a report. Among UC employees, the 30-day smoking rate is 9.9 percent.

In August, Cal State Fullerton became the first California State University campus to ban smoking; the policy includes prohibitions on e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products.

David Timberlake, a UCI associate professor of public health and epidemiology, said in a university-produced article in September that products like e-cigarettes “aren’t inspiring smoking cessation” and emphasized the effects of e-cigarettes not being well understood.

“Let’s face it,” Timberlake told the university’s news service. “Nicotine is very addictive, and these alternative products really pack a punch.”

UC Davis, in a statement on its website explaining why e-cigarettes were being banned on campus, emphasized that even though e-cigarettes emit a smokeless vapor, the vapor contains chemicals including arsenic and nicotine.

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