There are many ways to get to know people when you are in college. You can make friends with your roommate, with people in your class, and many also make friends by smoking. At Purchase, smoking is a stress reliever and a social norm, despite its apparent health risks.
Many college students today feel the pressures of making friends, keeping their grades high, and are all trying to find themselves, but one way students relieve these factors of stress is actually by smoking cigarettes. Smoking cigarettes on a college campus can also be used as a way for acceptance with others, according to Dr. David Abrams, Executive Director of The Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies.
“Smoking is still a form of appetite and weight control and a way to improve body image and self acceptance in a peer group,” said Abrams in this HC article. “Peer pressure and close friends who smoke are drivers of why kids in general still start smoking.”
Robyn Lax, a technical design sophomore, started smoking before she came to SUNY Purchase, but she had much to say on the topic. She believes it mostly relieves stress and that is the way she met many people.
Robyn Lax said, “You go outside and meet smokers outside your building, you make conversations with them and then after a while you start to meet their friends and it becomes a routine.”
Lax believes that smoking is also a stress reliever and social relaxer because you relieve the stress of schoolwork, and the anxiety of meeting people.
A sophomore cinema studies major, Anthony O’Shea, has been smoking since he’s been a young teenager and believes it’s much more of a social aspect here at SUNY Purchase.
“Because of the size of the campus there is nothing to do but smoke sometimes and it’s a good way to meet people because everyone is doing it,” said O’Shea.
He has wanted to quit for a while, but it is hard to stop when everyone here does it, according to O’Shea.
When it comes to smoking and gender, Anthony O’Shea believes it is totally equal on campus. Robyn Lax also believes that the same number of men and women smoke, but that women have more cigarettes on them then men do.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cigarette smoking is more common among men (23.5%) than women (17.9%). Most people smoke more during the ages of 25-44 years old (24.0%) then the ages of 18-24 years old (21.8%).
College students believe smoking can lead to social acceptance, relief of stress, and can help maintain a certain body image, but for a high price. Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Cigarette smoking causes about 1 of every 5 deaths in the United States each year. It can also cause premature deaths. On average, adults who smoke cigarettes die 14 years earlier than nonsmokers. Smoking also causes different types of cancers, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, and secondhand smoke can kill those who breathe the air around smokers, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
“I’m going to live the way I want to live, because no matter what you do, you can’t predict when you won’t be living anymore,” said MargaretAmisano, a student from Syracuse, in this HC article on smoking.
“You never know when your time will run out regardless of whether you smoke or not,” she said.