Topic: Smoking Inside the School Campus
Smoking is one of the most important issues every country is facing not just the United States. According to the World Health Organization[1], smoking-related diseases kill one out of ten persons in the world. And smoking is one of the causes of death in more than one in five Americans. Addiction in smoking begins at a young age and according to cancer. Org[2], statistics in the year 2004 revealed that 22% of high school students were cigarette smokers. A smoker cannot gain any good benefits from it, instead a number of lung, heart and cancer diseases. And in addition to cancer, cancer.org discussed that around one-third of deaths in cancer is due to tobacco smoking and 90% is because of lung cancer, aside from lung cancer smoking can also cause cancers in the larynx, oral cavity, pharynx and esophagus, it also partly responsible for the cancers in bladder, pancreas, cervix, kidney, stomach and leukemia.
There are a number of reasons why the youth smokes cigarettes, in the study of Pierce et al [3](qtd. In Beltramini and Bridges), the researchers determined that there are strong involvement between smoking among youth and the advertisements of cigarettes.(263) Aside from advertisements of cigarettes, another influence in smoking of youth is peer influences, according to the study of Presson et al,[4] “peer influences are more important for adolescent smoking in families with more highly educated parents. Perceived peer support tended to diminish smoking risks from highly educated parents but tended to increase smoking risks among adolescents from less highly educated families.”(62) If the youth is surrounded by peers in school that are smoking, and the student sees it on the media, he or she is more likely to smoke. Another factor is smoking within family members, a child that grew up in the environment where he or she sees, her or his mother, father or siblings smoke, the smoking habit will most likely to be developed.
What are the problems students faces because of smoking in campuses? There are a number of problems that will arise due to the smoking of cigarettes in school campuses. One of them is the risk of non-smokers to pulmonary diseases due to secondhand smokes emitted from cigarettes. According to the site hotfact[5], second hand smokes are more fatal because it is made from a mixture of two forms of smoke from tobacco, nicotine is also shared, and secondhand smoke is considered as Group A carcinogens which can cause cancers to human. Another problem that students and faculty members face is students that are non-smokers have a hard time looking for spots in campuses that are free from smokes. Another problem is students will feel more pressured to smoke if they see that there are smokers in the campuses. Smokers that would want to quit smoking will have a hard time doing due to the fact that he or she will be tempted in puffing another cigarette when cigarette smoking is everywhere in the campus. Smoking also is a source of financial difficulty, because instead of saving some money, students tend to spend it on cigarettes. As mentioned above cigarette smoking is also the cause of some pulmonary illnesses that will also contribute to a student’s financial difficulty.
Each and everyone of us has its own opinion regarding people who smoke, the students reaction to smoking will help the school in implementing measures in prohibiting smoking in school campuses. In the study of Biasco and Hartnett[6] on the sample of students from Northwest Florida University, the students regard smoking as a bad habit and dangerous to one’s health, but were separated regarding tougher laws on smoking. Students also believed that the non-smokers must not be endangered by the smoke emitted on cigarettes and must be advised on the harm and danger of smoking. (442)
What are the different solutions or measures school administrations must make in prohibiting smoking in school campuses? There are a lot of ways in which the schools can prevent smoking inside the campus, one of them is “making dormitories smoke-free and improving smoking cessation programs.”[7] (US Newswire) By implementing smoke-free regulations in dormitories, smoking inside the campus if not prevented will be lessened. Colleges and Universities have cessation programs on smoking, but universities and colleges need to improve these programs in order to prevent the students as well as faculty members to smoke or trying again to smoke. Cessation programs also help students and faculty members in quitting the bad habit. Another preventive measure is having a school-based, antismoking intervention program. According to Beltramini and Bridges, the program utilizes a standard lectures and exercises, a pre-test and post-test is conducted among the students which contains four-interval rating scale items and were computed to get the average in order to derive a measure for comparisons. The results on the study were positive which means that the instruction on preventing smoking was effective (263+). Having antismoking intervention programs in school is also another way in preventing smoking from campuses, because students tackled an in-depth discussion regarding the cause and hazards of smoking.
The Action on Smoking and Health[8] (ASH) proposed steps addressing the problems in smoking in school campuses, some of the following steps are that will be helpful in preventing smoking inside campuses are: (a) Education on the hazard on health of smoking, the university must have the knowledge regarding the range and impact of smoking. (b) Policies on the limitation of smoking in campuses must come with programs in helping smokers to quit. (c) Giving incentives to university workers who quit smoking. (d) The areas that must be limited should be staged in a step-by-step basis. And (e) Smoking must be prohibited inside the campus premises, professors and students who wish to smoke must smoke outside the school premises or the designated smoking areas in the university.
Smoking is the most easy to prevent cause of disease, and aside from the fact that it is the easiest cause to prevent, it is also one of the most inexpensive. Measures and solutions to prevent and stop smoking are very easy, the only difficult task is to demand smokers to stop and encourage teenagers not to do it. It must be a two-way process, the university must implement strict rules and the students and faculty members must adhere to those rules and must have the initiative to stop the smoking habit.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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