It's the job of a university to try to change people's personal habits when it comes to smoking? Some might say that the university should stay out of the individual student's personal choices, especially if they aren't doing anything illegal.
But universities and anti-smoking advocates contend that because a university is a public place it has responsibilities to all parties involved, both smokers and non-smokers. And because smokers negatively affect the health of everyone around them, their behavior should be regulated.
Thirty years ago, people smoked inside buildings at the UA, but now that seems unthinkable. As time progresses and the negative affects of smoking become even clearer, different universities will deal with the tobacco issue in different ways, each with the goal of reducing smoking on campus.
When the Purdue University football team visits Tucson in a month, they bring with them not only a top-20 football team, but a brand-spanking-new cigarette ban on their campus. In the past at Purdue, students had designated smoking areas outside of dormitories and campus buildings. But starting this semester, smoking will be banned almost everywhere on their campus - parking decks, athletic events, and outside of dorms and classrooms.
Is the UA next? The smokers reading this right now might be shaking in nicotine-craving fear over the possibility that they will have to lose their beloved on-campus cigarettes in favor of good health and consideration for others. Nonetheless, such a severe policy change on our campus is doubtful in the foreseeable future.
The UA currently deals with tobacco usage on campus with a two-pronged approach. First, smokers have been banished from inside of buildings and an area extending 25 feet outside building entrances. To back this up, the UA Health Promotion and Preventive Services actively promotes a social norms marketing campaign concerning tobacco usage by students. The theory is that if nonsmoking students feel that smokers are outside of the norm, then they will be less likely to start.
Their policy has produced positive results. Lee-Ann Hamilton, a health educator at HPPS, reports that smoking on campus is down 27 percent since 1998, an impressive change. Hamilton attributes the change to a number of factors, including increased money to public education on the issue from the tobacco lawsuit settlements of the 1990s.
Social representations of smoking are also changing. In the past, smoking was viewed as cool, but these days anti-smoking forces can seem downright overwhelming to the seasoned addict.
When Peter Jennings died from tobacco-caused lung cancer, and Superman's widow, Dana Reeve, was diagnosed with the same illness, the concern over young smokers in this country was brought into focus (Jennings was a smoker from the age of 11 until his mid-40s, while Reeve wasn't a smoker). Lung cancer statistics poured over the airwaves as a reminder of just how bad smoking is for you.
There are more than 160,000 deaths attributed to lung cancer every year (23 percent of all cancer deaths), and 90 percent of the lung cancer cases are attributed to smoking cigarettes. Lung cancer caused by smoking accounts for 13 percent of all new cancer cases every year - more than 170,000 new cases were diagnosed last year alone. In case there was any doubt as to the health benefits and consequences of smoking, this should lay them to rest.
To a college student, the science isn't always that clear. One in four students smokes cigarettes, as reported in a national survey of students on college campuses, and 28 percent of UA students smoke, according to the spring 2005 Campus Health and Wellness survey.
I myself am a smoker and have conjured up hundreds and thousands of excuses for my habit. Oftentimes these excuses are couched in my fundamental disrespect for authority (the man can't tell me what to do), and other times I justify my habit for the personal joy it brings me.
When I see myself as a 22-year-old in college, it is hard to find the urgency to quit right now. But all I have to really do is think about the blackened and breathless demise of a famous journalist like Peter Jennings to make me reconsider that next fix.
But sometimes not even the thought of my degenerated lungs is enough to stop me from taking another drag; that's why there are programs to help. The HPPS offers a program to help you quit smoking - they are located in the new Campus Health Service in the Highland Commons. Call 621-5700 to set up individual counseling.
Dan Post is an ecology and anthropology senior. He can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.