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“Leech Lake Tribal College (LLTC) in northern Minnesota recently took the bold step of making its entire campus commercial tobacco-free.
The two-year process was completed in August 2014 with the adoption of a campus-wide, commercial tobacco-free policy. Now, the only tobacco not prohibited on the school grounds is asemaa, tobacco used for ceremonial purposes.
LLTC’s mission is to provide quality higher education grounded in Anishinaabe values. Leech Lake Tribal College honors its heritage and embraces sacred medicines, such as asemaa, as important gifts for all people. Supporting opportunities for traditional asemaa use on campus was deemed a critical component of the policy.
Surveys that were conducted before and after the policy was instituted show that the new policy supports LLTC’s efforts to encourage healthier lives for its campus members. The percentage of students who use commercial tobacco has dropped from 49 percent to 41 percent since the policy was implemented.
“I appreciate having a non-smoking campus, especially as a light smoker,” said Michelle Marion, an LLTC student. “Not being able to smoke freely on campus has probably kept me from being a regular smoker again. [For] nearly four years now, I haven’t been a regular smoker. If the campus allowed it, then I’d probably bum that cigarette that would lead me to another and another and then to being that regular smoker.”
– Indian Country Today, Leech Lake Tribal College Goes Commercial Tobacco-Free.
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Indian Country 52
Indian Country 52 is a weekly project by David Bernie that uses the medium of posters that promote issues and stories in Indian Country.
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This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
