A Smoker's Day of Reckoning

Today is just another day: coats zipped against the wind, readings furiously skimmed before section, the relentless click of e-mail and problem sets in the basement of the Science Center. There are papers due, office hours to go to, sleep that approaches unseen in the Lamont reading room or in lecture, but nothing terribly out of the ordinary. Another day, its stresses and triumphs, awakes to its own promise.

Yet today is also the 23rd Great American Smokeout. Today, all across the nation, the American Cancer Society (ACS) is sponsoring events to encourage smokers to stop smoking, at least for 24 hours, and see how it makes them feel. "Prove to yourself if you can quit for one day, you can quit for a lifetime," say the advertisements. Through a variety of programs, from nicotine patches to counseling, the ACS and its partner within the federal government, a branch of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), are working to make today the first day of a better, more healthy life for millions of Americans.

At Harvard, with the luck to be located in Massachusetts, one might think the Smokeout is a day to rest on our laurels. Harvard buildings are already smoke-free, and on Tuesday the Massachusetts Department of Public Health announced that Massachusetts has 150,000 fewer smokers than it did six years ago. Even the rate of teens who are starting to smoke is down slightly. These results, as well as extensive lobbying pressure, have convinced Governor A. Paul Celucci that the tobacco settlement in the budget should be allocated as planned, including $6.7 million to smoking-cessation programs.

However, there is much to be done. Despite legislation and countless studies showing the ill effects of tobacco on smokers and on those with whom they live, people continue to smoke. I will not now revert to your mother and rattle off the terrible things smoking does to your body. I am sure the smokers in the readership would tell me the problem is not ignorance; it's denial. It's just that smoking seems to ease out the wrinkles of the Harvard day and keeps things focused at the high-strung level of Harvard student performance.

First, nonsmokers should remember there is more to tobacco companies than tobacco. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health's Web site, www.getoutraged.com, not only continues the themes of their well-placed, blunt ads but has a "secrets" section that shows the links between the tobacco parent companies and a lot of seemingly unrelated industries. The site has a number of get-involved resources for smokers and nonsmokers alike, as well as snippets of the internal industry memos that suggested targeting minors through give-aways and cartoon characters like Joe Camel was a way to ensure the industry's future.

Through a cigarette-smoke-turned-dollar-sign link, the Web site shows that a fraction of the money you spend on Entemann's, Altoids, Philadelphia cream cheese, Jell-O or any Kraft or Miller product makes its way up the corporate system to the parent company, Philip Morris. Maybe such diversification should be lauded, not boycotted, but the fact that Philip Morris has been exploiting its connections to Kraft to get its name on public-service (or self-service?) spots during televised weekend sporting events might make you reconsider how those alliances function and for whom. The same could easily be said of the other tobacco firms and their families of products.

For smokers, one day a year isn't so bad to have to confront the truth: cigarettes kill. "Probably the group with the least amount of people wanting to stop smoking are the teenage and young adult smokers, and that is disturbing for all of us," says Jim R. Giebfried, director of cessation programs in Massachusetts for the American Cancer Society and the Smoker's Quit Line (1-800-TRY-TO-STOP). "Very often college students are in a location where they may be affected by other smokers, like at parties," said Giebfried, a graduate of the Harvard School of Public Health. He said that young adults are the age group least likely to quit, and that there are more young men trying to quit than young women, which means perhaps more fetuses and children suffering with a smoking mother.

The links alcohol creates on a college campus are also worthy of note. According to statistics from SAMHSA, over half of binge drinkers are current smokers, another piece of evidence that smokers are many times more likely to abuse alochol or illicit drugs. Additionally, over 3,000 minors begin smoking every day, and the pattern of addiction is particularly strong. According to these figures, over one-third of those who are "experimenting" end up addicted by the age of 20.

Giebfried said the role of peer pressure and media images in teenagers who begin to smoke is particularly alarming, and praised the commitment by the Boston Globe not to run smoking ads this month. He said groups are trying to pressure the Boston Herald to adopt the same policy.

Giebfried cheered the numbers from the Department of Public Health but pointed out the survey showed that minors still had easy access to cigarettes. He said this is a problem for law enforcement but also for parents and older siblings--like college students--who smoke. Smokers "should not leave their cigarettes around," Giebfried said, "because the younger individual often picks up those cigarettes and either uses them or passes them around at school." He compared the ethical responsibility to be vigilant on cigarettes at home to the laws that regulate that parents lock up their firearms. That way, even if you or your parents don't stop smoking, you can at least stop your younger siblings from starting.

This day, however, is about the smokers themselves. "The hardest thing for young smokers is the fact that they are not experiencing the long-term effects immediately," Giebfried said. An easy way to see how addicted you are to cigarettes, he said, was to think about how long you typically go after waking up before needing a cigarette. If the time is under a half hour, he said, that is a sign of serious addiction.

And this addiction should be taken seriously. Information provided by Jim Michie, the spokeperson for SAMHSA, suggested that the Great American Smokeout should help college students focus on their tobacco addiction: "Just as they think about college as a means to achieve their long-term career goals, students should look at stopping smoking as a way to live long enough to enjoy what their hard work and sacrifice have earned them."

As someone who grew up in a house with a sign that said "Thank you for not smoking. We'd rather die of natural causes" on the front door, I am probably not the best person to advocate quitting to smokers; I don't know their experience.

What I do hope to offer is empathy. Today, make sure to smile extra big to the person in your life who smokes. Sit with them at lunch, walk to class together or plan to paint the town (what there is of one) in New Haven. Show you care. These are things we should be doing every day, of course, but perhaps today they can make an extra difference and show smokers what a day without nicotine can be like.

Adam I. Arenson '00-'01 is a history and literature concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.