Researchers Alarmed by 28% Jump in College Smokers

Smoking among college students has risen by 28% in the last four years, alarming researchers who say the new trend likely signals a reversal of the 30-year decline in adult smoking rates and could lead to further increases in tobacco-related illness.

The new study, released Tuesday by the Harvard School of Public Health and published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., showed that college students, who for years have been among the demographic group most resistant to smoking, are rapidly catching up to their non-college-educated contemporaries.

The shift is hardly surprising since it was presaged by an increase over the last decade in the percentage of teens who smoked and since it is those children who are now in college. Of the students surveyed in the study, 90% had experimented with cigarettes in high school.

But the increase is still disturbing to public health experts, who until now had focused little on whether the children who had experimented with smoking as teenagers would become regular smokers.

“This is a very dangerous sign and it may signal an increase in the general population of adult smokers,” said Harvey Wechsler, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, one of the study’s authors. “When the most resistant group changes, we have to worry about the rest of the population. That’s why something has to be done.”

Until recent years, the percentage of adult Americans who smoked declined steadily from a high of nearly 43% in 1966 to a fairly steady 25%, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Within these broad statistics, however, different groups had widely varying habits, with college educated adults among the least likely to smoke.

Now, according to the Harvard study, which surveyed nearly 15,000 students, 28% of college students count themselves as smokers. That is still fewer than the general population--about 34% of non-college-educated people under 25 are smokers--but it is a substantial increase over previous years. As recently as 1991, 12% of college-educated men smoked.

Although Asian, black and Latino college students all had lower rates of smoking than white college students, the only demographic group whose smoking did not increase at record rates were Latinos. According to the study, smoking by Latino college students rose 12%.

Researchers were particularly concerned that of those students who were smoking in college, 25% reported becoming daily smokers after previously smoking only occasionally. Since the majority of college smokers are not yet deeply addicted--fewer than 11% smoke more than a pack a day--they are prime candidates for anti-smoking messages, said Nancy Rigotti, an internist at Massachusetts General Hospital, another of the study’s co-authors.

“Clearly, the college years are a time of great flux . . . it is a window to intervene in students’ smoking habits,” said Rigotti, who, along with other experts, advocated that colleges undertake a range of anti-smoking initiatives.

Among their recommendations: Schools should make dormitories smoke-free and increase the number of public spaces, such as classrooms and meeting areas, where smoking is barred. College health services also need to promote smoking cessation programs, they said.

The tobacco industry’s proposed settlement with several state attorneys general, which was announced Monday, includes billions of dollars for public health initiatives at the state and national levels, and a portion of that money needs to be aimed at college smokers, said William Novelli, president of the National Center for Tobacco Free Kids, a nonprofit group.

Said Rigotti: “This is a group that has fallen below the radar screen because in the past we thought they didn’t smoke much. We were really focused on younger people because they were such a good political cause. Now we have to do something about it.”