Students in smoky rooms likely to light up

According to researchers at Harvard University, you can catch more than just the flu from your roommate. You can also pick up a life-long habit.

A study released last week by the Harvard School of Public Health concluded college students who live with smokers are 40 percent more likely to start smoking than their peers who live in smoke-free housing.

According to Henry Wechsler, the principal investigator of the study and Director of College Alcohol Studies at the Harvard School of Public Health, students who live with smokers often begin smoking because they see the behavior so often that they view it as common and acceptable. Peer pressure and the ease with which students can smoke in non-restricted housing also play large roles in a student’s decision to light up a cigarette, he said.

However, because smoke-free dorms help offset these factors by limiting the opportunity to smoke and reducing the influence of smokers on their non-smoking peers, Wechsler believes these residences “are protective.”

“These findings suggest that smoke-free dorms may help incoming college students who have not yet taken up smoking avoid tobacco addiction during college,” he said.

Wechsler noted only 27 percent of colleges prohibit smoking in dorms and 29 percent of students who responded to the survey said while they do not live in tobacco-free housing, they would prefer such accommodations.

“Given the vulnerability of college students to this very addictive substance, colleges should seriously consider making all dorms smoke-free,” Wechsler said. “At a minimum, colleges should offer enough smoke-free dorms for all those requesting them, which is not the case right now.”

Dorms where smoking is restricted have become increasingly important because of a tendency among students to start smoking when they get to college. Between 1993 and 1997, tobacco use among college students increased by more than one-fourth and according to the Harvard study, 46 percent of college students reported using tobacco within a year of being surveyed.

College of Arts and Sciences freshman Coralee Neu said smoke-free dorms would prevent some students from smoking.

“I think being around smokers does cause people to start. Basically, everyone in my family smokes, and all the people I worked with smoked. Now, I do too,” she said.

According to the Harvard study, half of college smokers had tried and failed to quit smoking sometime during the previous year, a factor Neu said smoke-free dorms could impact.

“I’ve tried to quit, but it is very difficult when you are around people who smoke. You see others doing it, and it’s hard not to smoke because the temptation is right there, all the time,” she said.

However, some students believe that personal convictions — not living circumstances — determine whether or not an individual will begin to smoke.

“I live with someone who smokes; my friends smoke; I’m constantly around smokers, but I would never do it,” said Lia Minkoff, a CAS freshman. “It’s disgusting.”