•  Smoking & Tobacco Center •  Teen Smokers

For Greg Spritzer, college and nicotine go hand in hand.* A 26-year-old student at Montana State University, Billings never smoked in high school, and he manages to go cold turkey over the summers. But as soon as a new semester starts, he's back to six or seven cigarettes a day. What is it about college life that lures him to smoke? Stress? Peer pressure? "It's mainly boredom," Spritzer says.

There must be a lot of that going around. All across the country, college students are lighting up at an alarming rate. In a nationwide survey sent to 119 different colleges in 1999, nearly 30 percent of students said they were current cigarette smokers, and roughly half had used some form of tobacco (including cigars and smokeless tobacco) in the last year.

These figures are a significant jump from 1993, when 22 percent of all college students smoked cigarettes. And of course it's not just boredom: It's the pervasive connection in our culture between smoking and that ever-elusive quality, cool. In polls, teens and twentysomethings invariably cite social status and "looking cool" as the main reasons they started smoking. And according to the American Lung Association, the most common situation in which young people first try a cigarette is in the company of a friend who already smokes.

Until recently, health experts largely ignored smoking on college campuses, says Henry Wechsler, PhD, a researcher with the Harvard School of Public Health. "Alcohol is such a major issue [in college] that smoking kind of got lost in the shuffle," he says. But in the last few years, smoking on campus has become a hot topic, and for good reason: The college years are crucial in making or breaking an addiction.

Some smokers, like Spritzer, take their first puffs in college. (Spritzer himself got started when someone passed around cheap cigars during a late-night card game.) Other students experiment with cigarettes in high school but start smoking heavily in college. And like smokers of any age, many college students are actively trying to quit.

The importance of the college years hasn't been lost on the tobacco companies, says John Pierce, PhD, head of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the University of California, San Diego. "The industry has been focusing heavily on getting its promotional material to college students," he says. In some ways, he says, college students are the perfect audience. They're old enough to buy cigarettes but young enough to be highly receptive to ads promoting a hip, fun lifestyle. The number of cigarette advertisements in magazines and newspapers popular with college students demonstrates this marketing push. According to the Alternative Weekly Network, tobacco industry advertising accounts for a whopping 70 percent of the advertising revenue of alternative weekly newspapers.

A single highly popular ad campaign can make all the difference. Pierce sums up the rise in college smoking in two words: Joe Camel. Although the once-ubiquitous cartoon mascot for Camel cigarettes was withdrawn in 1997 due to public outcry, the ads drove an enormous boom in preteen and teen smoking, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- one that is still felt today. (For more information on teenage smokers , click here.)

Other marketing strategies go right to the heart of campus life. Tobacco companies throw parties in on-campus bars, give away hip merchandise, and sponsor concerts and other events, some of which require the purchase of cigarettes to gain admittance. For example, reports the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids, in 1999 Philip Morris hosted 117 events, including concerts by such well known bands as Smash Mouth and the Afghan Whigs, which were open only to those who had accumulated the requisite number of "Marlboro Miles." Another study of more than 10,000 U.S. college students, published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2005, found an association between attending such events and higher levels of student smoking. The study, based on data from the 2001 Harvard College Alcohol Study, also found that nearly 1 in 10 students had attended a bar, nightclub or campus student event where cigarettes were given away during the academic year.

Besides being bombarded by ads from Big Tobacco, students face another obstacle. When the allure of smoking finally wears off and students are ready to quit, there are often no support services available to help them break the habit. According to a recent survey by Harvard's Wechsler and colleagues, out of 393 four-year colleges, fewer than 60 percent offered any sort of smoking cessation programs. And those that did exist were poorly publicized or not well designed to appeal to college-aged smokers.

Colleges could also take steps to make it harder for students to smoke, Wechsler says. Currently, fewer than one-third of all colleges ban smoking in all indoor areas, including dorm rooms and offices. When colleges do take a stand, it makes a big difference. The Journal of American College Health reported in March, 2001 that nonsmoking students are 40 percent less likely to take up the habit when they live in smoke-free dorms.

As a nursing student, Greg Spritzer knows that six or seven cigarettes a day are six or seven too many. He plans to quit as soon as he finds a place of his own to live off-campus. Of course, finally getting that degree wouldn't hurt, either.

* Spritzer was interviewed for this report in 2001.

-- Chris Woolston, M.S., is a health and medical writer with a master's degree in biology. He is a contributing editor at Consumer Health Interactive, and was the staff writer at Hippocrates, a magazine for physicians. He has also covered science issues for Time Inc. Health, WebMD, and the Chronicle of Higher Education. His reporting on occupational health earned him an award from the northern California Society of Professional Journalists.

Further Resources

Factsheet on teenagers and smoking. http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=39871

Download the acrobat reader file for a special report on how tobacco companies are marketing to college students: http://tobaccofreekids.org/research/factsheets/index3.shtml

References

First published December 4, 2001
Last updated July 21, 2008
Copyright © 2001 Consumer Health Interactive

Or Find More On:

Back to top of page