A recent report in The Journal of Family Practice said that college students could be at a greater risk of being addicted to cigarettes than they know.
According to the New York Times, the report, by Dr. Joseph R. DiFranza, from the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester said that while adults often feel the need to smoke 45 minutes to an hour after a cigarette, adolescents can often go far longer between cigarettes, but that doesn’t mean they are any less addicted.
“We have long assumed that kids got addicted because they were smoking 5-10 cigarettes a day, now we know that they risk addiction after trying a cigarette just once,” Dr. DiFranza told the Times.
This addiction, or “loss of autonomy,” has been tested a number of times, including three New Zealand studies with over 25,000 adolescent smokers, in which it was found that 25 to 30 percent who had smoked for the first time in the previous month already had some loss of autonomy, according to the article.
The Times reports that Robin Mermelstiend, director of the Center for Health Behavior Research at the University of Illinois said that while DiFranza’s message was important “the vast majority of teenagers who try one or two cigarettes don’t go on to become smokers.”
“The key point really is that genetically the brain activity some people are predisposed to become addicted,” said Wilmore Webley, assistant professor of microbiology at UMass, who’s used DiFranza’s research in class to teach students about smoking. “The article said if you enjoy your first cigarette your likelihood to be addicted is much higher than someone who is not happy with it. The type of people who initially get that high could very well get addicted that first cigarette.”
Webley said there are a lot of social smokers, those who usually just smoke occasionally in social situations like parties, at UMass, and the trend is no different with them.
“At UMass one of the most interesting things is that people who report they are social smokers, say ‘I can stop anytime, I just smoke on the weekend at parties.’ Something interesting is when I polled them; people who thought they were social smokers had a very difficult time quitting. That suggests that people think they’re addicted and just didn’t realize.”
Senior Chris Sullivan, a 22-year-old psychology major at UMass said a lot of why people start smoking in college can be related to alcohol.
He said he’s a social smoker and “it’s also a college thing, there’s a validation of a lifestyle in college that includes drinking, and also smoking for some. The funny thing is everyone says ‘it’s not going to happen to me.'”
“I think there’s something about smoking that almost every smoker would agree,” said Sullivan. “You don’t really want to smoke, the second you realize you want to smoke, you realize you don’t because you know what the stigma is and you know what that means for your life.”
Webley and DiFranza both emphasized that getting less kids to smoke has a lot to do with getting information out to them.
“Coupled with increasing vigilance about younger kids getting cigarettes and increasing price, people need to give them a straight up talk about what you’re really doing because if you never start smoking, you never have to worry about quitting,” said Webley. “Any time you can get someone who is a smoker stop and think about it, any day you can make some one stop think ‘should I be smoking?’ is a success
