Imagine finals. It is your first semester at college and the whole thing has been overwhelming. Your friends and family are hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away. You fell behind on too many assignments over the semester because you’ve been working too many hours at a coffee shop, trying to keep a roof over your head and your tuition paid. Now, you have been up all night writing papers and putting together group projects that are due the next day. You are stressed. You haven’t really eaten all day because don’t have time. Health is the last thing on your mind. Smoking a cigarette might be the only break you have time for. It might be the best part of your day. You don’t want to be saved from the harmful effects of tobacco right now. You light-up.
Even though many policies, programs, and advertising campaigns have been set in place to encourage tobacco cessation, as well as reduce the effects of second hand smoke, both locally and nationally, the college-aged population is still smoking cigarettes considerably more than the rest of us. When it comes to curbing tobacco-use and second-hand smoke on college campuses, policy makers may need to rethink their approach.
In the United States, 44.5 million adults (20.9%) are smokers, but the within the 18-24 age group, 23.6% smoke, as reported by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in 2004. Prevalence of smoking among U.S. adults was 24.7% in 1997, according to the CDC, which illustrates the slow and steady decline of tobacco use over the last decade.
A recent study done by the Department of Health Services of California indicates that 18% of college-aged individuals regularly smoke tobacco, as of 2005. It's an also an obvious decline since 2000, when 20.5% of that population smoked. However, the fact that young adult smokers still rank far above the state average for all adults (14%) has got cessation advocates looking for a new way to convince the tobacco industry’s first legal-targets to stay clear of the harmful effects of tobacco smoke.
“No one cares. Everyone smokes everywhere. There are cigarette butts everywhere,” says San Francisco State University freshman, Ryan Alazo, 18.
He hands-out a menthol-cigarette to a stranger while another one dangles from his own lips, burning under a huge sign that thanks him and his fellow students for helping to make their campus smoke-free. “Ya’ see, Alazo asks, laughingly, nodding up toward the sign. “She just got a smoke-FREE!”
“Fucking bullshit,” Alazo says about his school’s smoking policy. “Those ‘truth’ commercials get on my nerves too. At least they hit pretty hard though. Like the commercial with the body-bags all over the streets.”
Of course, there are the body-bags. According to the National Cancer Institute, tobacco-use remains the leading preventable cause of death in the United States. Smoking is responsible for more than 440,000 body-bags (deaths) each year and results in an annual cost of more than $75 billion in direct medical costs, in the U.S. alone.
There are approximately 3,000 lung-cancer-deaths each year among adult-nonsmokers in the U.S., as a result of exposure to secondhand smoke, according to the National Cancer Institute. NCI also reports that secondhand smoke is linked to nasal and sinus cancer, and some research suggests it is associated with cancers of the cervix, breast and bladder. Not to mention an array of non-cancerous conditions from irritation of the eye to sudden infant death syndrome.
In an effort bring about dramatic changes in Americans’ attitude about smoking, The American Cancer Society (ACS) developed the Great American Smoke Out. It was first put it into action on November 18th, 1976. Since then, every year, smokers across the nation are encouraged to smoke less or even quit for the day. The ACS states that “The event challenges people to stop using tobacco and raises awareness of the many effective ways to quit.”
On a global level, the World Health Organization has created World No Tobacco Day (WNTD), which is held every year on May 31st in many locations all over the world. The goal of WNTD is to “encourage countries and governments to work towards strict regulation of tobacco products,” according to WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative, and plans to do this “by raising awareness about the existence of the wide variety of deadly tobacco products.”
Smokers everywhere are finding it increasingly difficult to continue their habit. In the face of deadly health risks, hefty tax-proposals and possibly becoming a social outcast or law-breaker, tobacco users have many prices to pay for their choice.
In order to save money on health-care coverage, a Michigan company, Weyco, Inc., decided to fire all of its employees that refused to quit smoking in 2005. They stopped hiring smokers about two-years prior and gave existing employees that smoked fifteen-months to quit.
In November, 2006, the City Council of Belmont, CA unanimously decided to draft an ordinance that would officially ban smoking everywhere in city, except in privately-owned single-family homes. While in Belmont, smokers would have to refrain from lighting-up anywhere outdoors, in all multi-unit buildings and even while driving through the city. If enacted, the new law would become the most far-reaching anti-smoking rule in the country.
Because common knowledge says that curbing tobacco-use is beneficial to smokers and nonsmokers alike, academic campuses across the nation are making moves to become smoke-free. According to the American Nonsmokers' Rights Foundation, 34 colleges and universities nationwide prohibit smoking anywhere on campus. More are on there way.
Earlier this month, The Student Government Association at Oklahoma State University voted to allow smoking only in designated areas by August 2007. Other college campuses in that area are considering following the example set by OSU.
De Anza Community College in Cupertino, CA only allows smoking on the top-floor of student paring lots. Tobacco use is prohibited elsewhere on campus.
The San Francisco State University campus Tobacco Policy formerly prohibited smoking within twenty-feet of a campus building or ground-level air-intake structure. In 2003, SFSU President Robert A. Corrigan extended the distance to within thirty-feet.
The Academic Senate at SFSU got together and called for a smoke-free campus on April 27, 2004. On August 1, 2004, Corrigan issued a new Smoke-Free Campus Policy. It stated: “This University Executive Directive creates a smoke-free campus and limits smoking to specified areas. It further prohibits the sale of tobacco products on campus,” to be effective August 23, 2004. It proposed: “The success of this policy will depend on the thoughtfulness, consideration and cooperation of smokers and nonsmokers.”
Last year, the American College Health Association issued its Position Statement on Tobacco on College and University Campuses, in which they announced: “ACHA has adopted a NO TOBACCO USE policy and encourages colleges and universities to be diligent in their efforts to achieve a campus-wide tobacco-free environment.” They recommended eleven steps to be taken to address policy, prevention, and cessation as it pertains to tobacco issues, the 11th being: “Support and provide a process for frequent and consistent enforcement of all tobacco-related policies, rules, and regulations.”
SFSU Health Educator, Albert Angelo, offers to meet with students one-on-one to discuss smoking cessation and offer advice on how to deal with it. “We do the Great American Smoke-Out every November 18th and put out information-tables in the spring,” Angelo says. He claims that at least five-hundred people came to the Health Center’s tent during Smoke-Out on campus, which was pitched in the rain last month. “We had 500 t-shirts and they were all gone by the end of the day.”
According to Angelo, the university campus smoke-free policy is not working because officials are still looking into ways of enforcing it. “No one can enforce it,” Angelo says. “If we fine students, do we fine faculty? They don’t have all that down yet. It’s all voluntary.”
Australian SFSU student, Israel Redson, 21, agrees that no one can enforce the smoke-free policy. “I’ve been told-off by the cops before, but they just tell you to put-it-out. When they ride off, I just light-it-up again,” Redson says. “I know there is a quiz. The only reason I know that is because I got written up for smoking by the RAs. They made me take a quiz. I didn’t get a fine.”
Kelly Anderson, 21, tried to follow the smoke-free policy at SFSU, but she gave up after it seemed to her like she was the only one trying. “I’m new here,” says Anderson. “For the first week, I felt bad, so I’d hike a mile out to the edge of campus, but since everyone else is smoking wherever they want, I will too.”
When it comes to antismoking messages on college campuses, non smokers are generally supportive of the cause, but smokers will often respond with anger, defiance, denial and other negativity, which might even further their resolve to smoke.
And the same antismoking messages that may successfully encourage many adults and teens to not use tobacco may nevertheless be ineffective with college students that already smoke or are encouraged to do so in social-situations by their peers. Some strategies may even undermine smokers’ efforts to quit. It is clear that different initiatives might be needed for different age-groups and social-sects.
“For me, it’s kind of a cultural thing, being from Louisville KY,” says Corey Riley, 24.
Riley, a junior at SFSU, doesn’t trust antismoking campaigns because he believes that they are all paid for by the tobacco industry. According to Riley, “Phillip Morris is just trying to make their image look good, while doing one thing with their right hand and another with the left.”
A senior at SFSU, Becky Thornton, 23, is sure that the antismoking campaigns she has seen have not persuaded her to quit smoking. “I don’t think they are effective at all,” Thornton says. “Some commercials about cancer scare me, but I usually mute commercials.” Thornton smokes when she gets stressed out, and has only been buying cigarettes for about 6-months. She smokes on campus and is unaware of any programs or services offered by the university that are designed to help her quit.
Instead of tuning-out the risks, some college students justify smoking on the basis of the pleasure it provides. They feel that the rewards and benefits of smoking are greater than the costs.
“I used to hitch hike when I was younger and I actually started smoking as a defense thing. As long as I had a lit-cigarette I could easily fend-off someone, I have actually had to do it a couple of times, says Jessica Fischer, 23, a senior at SFSU.
“Smoking kind of serves as a social thing, especially when I travel. If I want to meet people it is a good way to do it.” Fischer has been smoking on-and-off since she was 14-years-old. She doesn’t smoke everyday. Instead, Fischer smokes during midterms and finals, when she doesn’t have time to go out and eat. “It’s a really good way to curb my appetite,” she says.
“I think it’s funny that we focus so much on shoeing away smokers while we drive cars and make plastics that pollute the environment,” Fischer says. “As, consumers we engage in worse things than smoking. Obesity is a huge problem in our country but you don’t see any ‘truth’ ads going after McDonalds.”
SFSU Journalism student Walter Crasshole wrote in Xpress, “We’re losing our individuality through this uptight moral grandstanding. California and many other states don’t see the irony in making smoking an outlaw activity-the delight of breaking taboo keeps it appealing. And now the campus is doing it, too, with little enforcement and a lack luster message that attempts to uber-PC-ify SF State campus to state standards.”
There is a third-person effect that limits some students’ ability to effectively heed warnings about tobacco use. They insist that ads would not change their own behavior, but may help younger people who have not yet started smoking.
“I am not really affected by those antismoking ads,” says Karen Kerrington, 21.
“Kids younger than us will probably stop smoking as much, I hope, but when I was growing up I really didn’t see all that many messages telling me not to smoke.”
Kerrington has been smoking for five-years and attending SFSU for two-years. She goes to the campus’ Student Health Center regularly. She always refuses offers by the staff to help her quit smoking. “I think about quitting when I wake up feeling like crap because I smoked too much the night before, but I keep on buying these packs.”
When it comes to smoking, individual traits become even more sovereign. University goers should learn to be tolerant and socially responsible, but where tobacco is involved, it can be hard to find any sort middle-ground. Policy makers in favor of successfully curbing tobacco-use on college campuses will need to consistently offer students resources that will help them find a middle-ground within themselves, not as an age group, but as individuals.
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