Lingle snuffs out
cigarettes on campus
Public school cafeteria workers and janitors will have to leave campus to light up.
Gov. Linda Lingle signed into law yesterday House Bill 2871, SD1, which closes a loophole that had allowed the workers to smoke on campus while all other school workers were prohibited.
The new law bans the use of tobacco at the schools and during school functions off campus.
The law also requires the state Department of Education to allow school employees to take smoke breaks off campus and to make available to them programs to help them quit smoking. The number and length of the breaks and the cost of the stop-smoking programs are left to collective bargaining.
State administrative rules that prohibit smoking anywhere on school campuses had been in place for a year when a federal ban on smoking in school facilities took effect in 1994, said Greg Knudsen, Education Department spokesman.
The state ban did not apply to cafeteria workers and janitors because their union, United Public Workers, had successfully challenged the state rules as an infringement on its right to negotiate smoking prohibitions imposed on its members.
The Education Department had been trying to get the union to go along with the state ban rather than invoke the federal law, which is less stringent, Knudsen said.
But with the federal government inquiring about the state's compliance with the 1994 law, the department sent letters to all school workers last month reminding them of the smoking ban, no exceptions.
Office of the Governor
hawaii.gov/gov/
