While the Boston University community seems to agree that the nationwide trend of college-aged student smoking – estimated at 28.5 percent by the American Cancer Society – has seeped onto campus, BU students say the trend is a result of generational pressures over physical addiction.
This increase in smokers in the 18- to 24-year-old age group can be attributed to the physical effects of nicotine, the addictive substance in cigarettes, psychology professor Kathleen Kantak said.
“There are likely many reasons if you consider the pharmacology of nicotine, which is a stimulant,” Kantak said. “It reduces stress, elevates mood, increases alertness, reduces appetite and promotes weight loss by increasing metabolism.
“To a college-aged student, these effects would be very appealing,” she continued.
Kantak said college-aged people start smoking for a variety of reasons. In addition to the physical effects, she said social pressures often serve as the catalyst of an addiction.
College of General Studies freshman Whitney Ahn said she started smoking in high school, “like everyone else.”
“It wasn’t a social thing,” she said, “I was having problems at home and it’s what I turned to.”
Ahn said the social appeal of smoking outweighs any physical “benefits.”
“I think it’s peer pressure,” Ahn said, “because everyone else is doing it.”
College of Engineering sophomore Greg Warot said when it comes to smoking, people’s human nature and sense of curiosity also provoke an addiction.
“I don’t think people start smoking because they want to fit in,” he said. “They are just curious at first.”
According to a University of Washington study, college students said they believed that up to 95 percent of students smoked when, in actuality, only 35 percent did.
Ahn said she thought the number would be “at least 60-70 percent,” while Warot, a non-smoker, put the number around 35 percent.
Why the discrepancy?
“Smokers tend to hang with smokers,” Kantak said. “So in their social network, their perception is that everyone smokes.”
Statistics collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a National Health Interview Survey in 2002 showed that in the college-age group, from 18 to 24 years of age, 32.4 percent of men and 24.6 percent of women smoked. Statistics also showed that those who completed higher levels of school tended to be less likely to smoke.
“Given their developmental age, a part of their brains called the prefrontal cortex is not yet operating at full potential,” Kantak said.
“Consequently, students that age are more sensitive to immediate rewards, what they view as benefits of smoking, and have aversion to delayed rewards, not smoking now so they don’t get cancer or heart disease later on,” she continued.
Ahn said while she is aware of health risks like cancer and emphysema associated with smoking, she is not concerned.
“I am,” she said, “but because I’ve done it for so long – I don’t think about it anymore.”