We all know the negative side effects of smoking. It makes your breath stink, you get wrinkles earlier, and I won’t even mention all of the types of lung diseases or cancers you can get from smoking.

In the past, there were many anti-smoking campaigns aimed at younger people. However, the hot topic in health care today is obesity. Some public health experts believe these anti-obesity campaigns have taken the focus off of preventing students from using tobacco products. Unfortunately, a recent survey confirms this by showing that 19.5 percent of high school students are smokers.

Why are students using tobacco? Terry Pechacek of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention thinks that “people are getting the image that it’s cool to use nicotine as a drug.” Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s some encouraging public health news.  According to a recent study by the American Lung Association, smoking is at an all-time low on college and university campuses across America.

On the other hand, warns the ALA, the news isn’t all good.  One out of five students still smoke.  Moreover, back in the early 1990s, there was a huge spike in college smoking after the percentage dropped down near its current 20 percent — so there’s reason to be nervous about another spike.

The ALA further reports that Big Tobacco is as aggressive as ever in promoting smoking on campus, spending a whopping $1 million a day on events and giveaways to promote their products.  Perhaps this isn’t surprising, since these companies can’t promote products directly to high school students — so they target college students instead as the “next best thing,” since virtually all smokers pick up the habit when they’re young.

The ALA offers some great recommendations to college campuses for fighting back against Big Tobacco.  These include prohibiting smoking on campus, refusing research dollars from tobacco companies, stopping the sale and advertising of tobacco on campus, and providing smoking cessation programs.