Smoking no longer allowed on State Farm campuses [The Pantagraph, Bloomington, Ill.]

Jan. 5--BLOOMINGTON -- State Farm Insurance Cos. has made it a little easier for any employees who made new year's resolutions to quit smoking.

State Farm's headquarters and Corporate South campuses are now smoke-free, as of Jan. 1. While smoking indoors has been prohibited since 1994, the new policy snuffs out smoking outside buildings, in designated outside smoking areas and in parking areas.

Campuswide policies such as State Farm's are seen as the next step in the anti-smoking movement, after Illinois passed its own indoor clean-air law and employers eye increased productivity and lower health care costs.

Not every outdoor smoking shelter at State Farm will disappear immediately, however, said spokesman Jeff McCollum. Some will stay in place (with new signs about the new policy) and become shuttle stops. Others have been offered to local community groups in an effort to recycle them, he said. A temporary smoking tent at headquarters was taken down Dec. 31.

Anyone caught smoking early on will likely be reminded about the policy, he said, and staff can call the code of conduct hot line if they see a violation. Violations would fall under the discretion of an employee's manager.

"I doubt there will be many infractions," McCollum said in an e-mail.

State Farm uses the American Cancer Society's Quitline telephone program. The insurer will pay for nicotine replacement therapy to go along with that Quitline counseling, he said.

While there's no indication of a sizable uptick in participants since the ban was announced in June, he said about 1,600 employees companywide have used Quitline since May 2008.

Campus policies

No one tracks exactly how many business campuses have gone smoke-free, said Bronson Frick, associate director at Berkeley, Calif.-based Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights. But it's a relatively new development; the Atlanta, Ga.-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn't institute its own campus policy until 2005.

The Smoke-Free Illinois Act went into effect in 2008, prohibiting smoking in public places, places of employment, government vehicles and within 15 feet of any entrance to a public place or place of employment.

The most recent trend -- where businesses see cost-savings potential and reduce secondhand smoke risks by extending smoke-free policies outside their doors -- began at hospitals nationwide, Frick said.

BroMenn Regional Medical Center and OSF St. Joseph Medical Center in November 2006 were the two largest Twin City employers to institute smoke-free campus policies, said Jackie Lanier, health promotions specialist at the McLean County Health Department.

"No one else in town is quite like State Farm, of course, but it sets the bar high as far as a positive thing," Lanier said.

State Farm says it wants to protect workers and visitors from the harm of smoke and to increase productivity. The CDC cites the American Productivity Audit, a national survey of over 29,000 workers, which found tobacco use was a leading cause of lost worker productivity, more than alcohol or family emergencies.

The new policy affects State Farm-owned property nationwide, but not its agents and their offices. McCollum said the insurance company's tobacco-using population in Bloomington isn't very large.

"People are more productive and live happier, better lives when they are healthy," he said.

To see more of The Pantagraph, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.pantagraph.com.

Copyright (c) 2010, The Pantagraph, Bloomington, Ill.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.