COSTA MESA : It’s a Smoking Ban--No Ands, Ifs or Butts

At Estancia High School on Wednesday, most workers seemed to have gotten the message that it was the first day of strict no-smoking rules in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District.

Throughout the district, smokers were adjusting to the new rules, which prohibit lighting up in any district building, including lounges, break rooms or other areas once designated as smoking areas. Also, employees who go outside for a smoke must do so out of the view of students, and bus drivers can no longer smoke in empty buses.

On the first day of the restrictions, no one at Estancia seemed to be ducking in dark corridors or smoking in the restrooms.

The former smoking room was deserted, and there were just a few telltale signs that some holdouts had dashed inside for one last smoke: Left there was a “Smoker’s Rights” ash tray, emblazoned with the group’s toll-free number, with a single cigarette butt inside.

“It’s not going to hurt us. . . . I could kill myself for saying it,” said Sally Granite, a smoker who works in a district operations office.

Added co-worker and smoking-break partner Cindy Means: “We’re chewing on our desks, but it’s not going to kill us.

“It’s not break time anymore, it’s cigarette time. You have to see how many you can smoke in 15 minutes. You can usually get in about 2 1/2 without hyperventilating and passing out,” she said about how they used to spend their smoking breaks.

Most smokers say that teachers and others working at school sites will be hit the worst, since many schools don’t have outdoor areas that are also out of the view of students--a problem the district concedes needs to be addressed.

Others add that longtime smoking areas, such as the district bus garage, will be difficult places in which to enforce the ban.

“People will have to be discreet,” said Don Evans, president of the local non-teaching employees union and a worker in the transportation division, which includes the garage. “I don’t think there will have to be smoking police out there.”

Most employees also say that they want to set an example for the students, and if that means altering their smoking habits, so be it.

“We are in a child-centered service, and even though there are no kids running around, we need to set an example,” Means said.

Most agree that the true test will come not during the first few days of the new rules, when employees can go outside in the summer sunshine for a smoke, but during the chillier winter months.

Others said that students, who for the past few years have been prohibited from smoking anywhere at school, would feel that the score had finally been evened up.