College smokers are likely to be a Caucasian, non-religious member of a fraternity or sorority who drinks, according to Edith Balbach, director of the Tufts Community Health program. This survey, based on national data that is not Tufts-specific, also found that smokers also tend to be dissatisfied with their education and non-athletic.
According to the Office on Smoking and Health at the Center for Disease Control, 80 percent of adult smokers started smoking before the age of 18. Since the strong force of peer pressure in middle school and high school tends to be the principal factor influencing adolescents' decisions to smoke, most anti-smoking campaigns are aimed at the adolescent crowd.
Among the college demographic, the overall number of student smokers stays approximately the same, "Around nine percent start in college and nine percent quit," Balbach said.
There are several possible reasons why nine percent of college students start smoking upon attending college. Alcohol plays a role, say both Balbach and Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Robin Kanarek, a researcher in the psychopharmacology of tobacco and nicotine use.
"One feature of college social life which may contribute to smoking is alcohol use," Kanarek said. "Alcohol may make students feel less inhibited and thus contribute to their decision to smoke."
Those suing tobacco companies focus on the firms' advertising practices. National ad campaigns like thetruth.com aim to raise awareness about companies' practice of marketing cigarettes to adolescents.
But some students do not attribute their first smoke to cigarette companies' ad campaigns. "Advertising didn't impact me at all - it was curiosity," freshman Jake Brotter said. Brotter tried his first cigarette when he was in eighth grade.
National anti-smoking campaigns also face limited success. "The anti-smoking ads definitely kept me from smoking up until freshman or sophomore year [of high school]," freshman Josh Lord said. "The first time I smoked a cigarette was sophomore year and I was considerably drunk."
Although anti-smoking campaigns may not prevent all people from taking up smoking, these national ad campaigns appear to have a degree of effectiveness. Junior Holly Ganbold, an international student from Austria, says that there are more anti-smoking campaigns in the United States than in Austria and "people smoke about 25 times more there."
Peer pressure and whether one's friends smoke are also two important factors in the whether students start smoking. "It's not advertising; it's who you're friends with," said Ganbold of her reasons for starting to smoke when she was 16-years-old.
Brotter started smoking regularly during his senior year of high school, when it became easy to buy cigarettes because he had "plenty of friends who were eighteen."
Nicotine's addictive and relaxing properties make cigarettes an appealing stress reliever to stressed students who already smoke - possibly contributing to the fact that most people who enter college as smokers leave as smokers.
"I think that stress does play a role in maintaining smoking behavior," Kanarek said. "We and others have data that show withdrawal from smoking increases feelings associated with stress in smokers. Also, there are data demonstrating that nicotine has mild pain-relieving properties."
Kanarek ventured to say that "if someone who is a smoker has to sit through a three-hour class without smoking, it could be detrimental" to classroom performance.
As far as the effect of smoking on success in school, studies for college-age students are limited. However, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, "smokers have shown impairment across a wide range of psychomotor and cognitive functions, such as language comprehension" during periods of abstinence and/or craving.
Fortunately, compared to other people of the same age group, college students are less likely to smoke. "While the stress of college may encourage some to start smoking or make it harder to quit, higher education as a rule is protective against smoking," Balbach said.
There are accessible resources on campus for those suffering from alcohol and (non-tobacco) drug problems, but the school's resources for cigarette smokers seeking to quit are more limited.
"I think Tufts' priority is alcohol and other drugs that pose an immediate threat to student health - tobacco is more deadly, but it tends to be a slow-motion killer," said Balbach when asked if Tufts' services for smokers are sufficient.
Tufts students are largely aware of the ill health effects of smoking. However, Brotter admits that, though he read about the Great American Smokeout - an effort by the American Cancer Society to help stop smoking that took place on Nov. 18 - he has no immediate plans to stop. "I'll probably try to quit in the next one to five years," he said.
Both Brotter and Lord said that if their younger siblings started smoking, they would tell them to stop. "I would definitely tell them not to," Lord said. Brotter concurred, saying that he would explain to his siblings that "smoking is bad for your health."
Lord added that he would say the same to friends that may be smoking too much. Though Lord says that he is not addicted to cigarettes, he feels that he has many friends who are. "[If they] are smoking a pack a day, I try to get them to cut down," Lord said.
Tufts Health Services offers a range of options to students who want to quit smoking. The Health Services website lists the Tufts AOD program, peer support groups, and a Counseling Center as some of their services.
