No country for Marlboro Men: students smokers face challenges

It would be hard to name a legal activity as thoroughly reviled, passionately embraced, socially segregated or emotionally charged as the practice of cigarette smoking. Cigarettes are both antiquated and obscene — on the one hand, a symbol of freedom and rebellion; on the other, of death and stupidity. At the College, people who smoke often feel much more the weight of the latter. After all, in this day and age, why would anyone decide to pick up a habit so heavily stigmatized, so fraught with well-publicized peril?

According to the most recent Middlebury College Alcohol Survey, conducted Fall 2010, out of 766 Middlebury students surveyed, about 79 percent reported never having smoked tobacco. 9.1 percent reported having smoked once or twice in the past 30 days, with steadily and rapidly decreasing numbers as frequency of use increased — just 2.5 percent responded to having had a cigarette more than 40 times in a month. On the other hand, statistics in the most recent census point to a much greater number of smokers than the Middlebury Alcohol Survey reports. Over the past five or so years, the rate of self-reported cigarette users, both under the age of 18 and 18 and over, has stabilized — around 20 percent. From statistics alone, in this particular sphere Middlebury seems to be a peculiarly healthy campus compared with the general population.

Casual observation seems to bear this perception out. Walking from the CFA to Bi Hall between classes turns up at most four smokers (and during midterms, five.) Smoking, it is safe to say, is not a huge problem on campus — as Jyoti Daniere, director of health and wellness education, put it, in comparison to other places “In Vermont, nobody smokes.” Still, in huddled groups or solitary moments, outside the Davis Library or Axinn’s entrance, a few stubborn people persist in lighting up.

The risks are hardly unknown — after all, the Surgeon General’s warnings have been written on cigarette packs since 1970. According to the CDC’s website, smoking substantially increases the risks of lung cancer, stroke, coronary heart disease, and obstructive lung diseases like emphysema. As of 2011, the FDA is planning to issue new warnings on all cigarette packs graphically showing the dangers of smoking. One proposed image shows a smoke billowing from a hole in a man’s throat accompanied by the words “Warning: Cigarettes are Addictive” — another shows two healthy pink lungs next to a pair of browned, tumor-riddled ones. “Warning: Cigarettes cause fatal lung disease.” But, says Assistant Professor of Sociology/Anthropology C. Winter Han, anyone smoking these days is hardly ignorant of the risk.

“We’re not living in the 50s,” said Han. “We’ve moved far beyond not knowing anything about cigarettes and the harm that it does… There’s not a single smoker at Middlebury who goes around saying that smoking is good for them.”

First Cigarettes and an Anonymous Habit

So who are the smokers at Middlebury, and why did they start? An informal survey, conducted by the Campus, revealed a varying range of ages in which students began to smoke. Often the question “When did you start smoking?” was answered with two numbers — the age people had their first cigarette, and the age when it became regarded as a habit. The majority of students who responded listed their first cigarettes as having happened in high school, mostly close to 15 or 16 years old — a couple of outliers listed 12 and 13. Many, however, picked up “habitual smoking” upon entering college — 17-19 was a popular age range.

The descriptions of first cigarettes are sometimes vivid, sometimes almost forgotten in the hundreds or thousands of smoke breaks taken since then. One junior told the story of buying her first pack of cigarettes — Marlboro 27s — at a gas station a few miles away from her house in Philadelphia, and then smoking it while barreling down the highway at 90 miles an hour with her friends, blasting music. Another, a senior, looked pensive when the question was put to him — he remembered the brand, but the circumstances seemed hazier: “Definitely a Djarum Black, probably with my friend Mark, who started smoking before I did…”

Of the 10 smokers, both habitual and social, who were interviewed or surveyed for this article, all requested anonymity. The reasons varied, but were all some variation on a fear of being identified, publicly, as someone who smokes — one, an ex-smoking senior, cited fear of being judged for her opinions by her professors. Another mentioned the possibility of being refused a job because a future employer could Google her name and find it associated with an article on smoking. Even for those who identified as “social smokers”, that reluctance to be publicly identified remains.

“[In] my drugs class, I ask, ‘How many of you are smokers?” and no one raises their hand,” said Rebecca Tiger, assistant professor of sociology/anthropology, when interviewed on smoking culture at Middlebury College. “I ask, ‘How many of you has had a cigarette in the past month?’ and many people raise their hand, but they won’t identify as smokers.”

Tiger teaches a course on the sociology of drugs. When asked why it was so many of the smokers interviewed refused to have their names included in this article, she cited the current prevailing attitudes towards smoking, coupled with Middlebury’s general obsession with health.

“We live in a culture that demands a strong negative response,” said Tiger. “There’s nothing good to be said about cigarettes. We’re so opposed to cigarettes that we can’t say anything but they’re terrible, they’re vile, that if you smoke you’re addicted. We can’t say that there’s any pleasure in smoking. I think partly that people say that they’re addicted [to smoking] because they can’t say anything else. If you say, ‘Because I like it,’ then they won’t let you off the hook.”

Social smokers hold a peculiar identity. A 2005 study on college campuses by Susan Kenford and others indicated that over a four-year period, one in five social smokers become daily smokers, though, by the same token, four do not. They tend to receive the brunt of the same prejudices that smokers do.

“We still don’t have an idea that you can maintain social smoking,” said Tiger. “We think it’s the path down to addiction.”

For that matter, the exact characteristics of a social smoker are often under contention. One senior surveyed noted that asking the question “Habitual or social smoker?” was a false choice.

“I don't really think this distinction is valid,” said the senior. “I smoke habitually, but I almost always do so with other people who smoke… I occasionally go days, weeks, and even months without smoking... Other times I smoke everyday —up to about half a pack a day — for weeks or months at a time.”

Why students smoke

A lot of the motivation for smoking at Middlebury appears to be a combination both of a desire to connect and also to de-stress. Almost all of the students interviewed cited a major factor for starting smoking was that a lot of their friends at the time also smoked — and at Middlebury, for many this remains the case. For the junior who started smoking Marlboro 27s, smoking provides a means to identify new friends.

“Or at least, [to identify] a potentially interesting person,” said the junior. “If someone is a smoker, they know how to deal with contradiction, internal and external. That’s fun!”

A first-year offered another reason.

“I like the social aspect of it at parties, and the buzz it gives me when I have been drinking.”

“I think people forget that groups do form around shared activities, and about interactions that are facilitated by something other than what is there,” said Han. “In my classes [that] go for three hours, and there’s a break in the middle… the kids who smoke, all go out together and immediately start interacting with each other. People form bonds over both good things and bad things, and we ignore that smoking allows people to form a connection in a very short period of time.”

The other reason is that smoking relieves stress, a fact cited by almost everyone interviewed. More than that, though, it is often regarded as a pleasure. Tiger recommended a book titled Cigarettes Are Sublime by Richard Klein — a book she requires for her sociology of drugs class. In the introduction, Klein notes that to put cigarette smoking down to simple addiction is to fundamentally misunderstand the act: “The fact of addiction itself explains nothing. After all, millions choose to stop, or never start. Becoming addicted and continuing to smoke implies a persistent desire to find some pleasure, some benefit in the drug.” He goes on to point out that “it is not the utility of cigarettes, however significantly useful they may be … Rather, the quality that explains their enormous power of seduction is linked to the specific forms of beauty that they foster.”

Cigarettes are Sublime is not a pro-smoking text by any means — it is a book devoted to understanding the practice of smoking from the perspective of someone who has quit. “Whatever else you want to say about tobacco, it gives people an opportunity to slow down and appreciate the pleasures of the moment/the conversation/each other's company,” said the senior who pointed out the false distinction between social and habitual smokers, when asked why he continued to smoke. “Far too often I think the enjoyable nature of smoking tobacco gets left out as our discourse becomes increasingly dominated by the ‘dangers’ of cigarettes. The fact that you would feel the need to ask this question might be a testament to this.”

The evolution of attitudes towards smoking

It has not always been this way. In the 20 years since Tiger was in college, she has noticed a change in the way we view substance and substance abuse in our culture.

“I study drugs, but more than that I study the way that we talk about drugs,” said Tiger. “Over the past 20 years, we’ve really moved away from allowing people that meaning [to be found in using drugs].”

But the discovery of the harms of second-hand smoke, she acknowledges, changed many of the attitudes people hold towards smoking.

“The idea is that if you’re smoking, you’re harming other people, and if you’re harming other people you lose all sympathy,” said Tiger.

Like many places, Middlebury used to allow smoking everywhere — in classrooms, lecture halls, dorms and dining halls. But as the second-hand smoke research started to trickle in, it was gradually banned— first in classrooms, then in buildings, in dorms and now, finally, where signs that forbid smoking near building entrances hover next to ashtrays. The policies were not changed without resistance, but people who smoke have more or less accepted this reality now, though the signs outside of building entrances seem to be treated generally with distain.

“I apologize if my smoking bothers you, or [if I] accidentally blew smoke [towards you], but I’m also standing outside in this freezing Vermont winter when I could just as easily be inside my room,” said the senior who started smoking Djarum Blacks, when asked if there was anything he wanted to tell nonsmokers.

He went on to express an opinion that was echoed by many who were interviewed.

“Frankly, you walking through a smoky area for two seconds … won’t give you cancer.”

For people who smoke, at least, the dangers of secondhand smoke seem to engender exaggerated responses in people who do not smoke, especially when compared to other common activities that have detrimental effects, such as drinking.

In that vein, anti-smoking campaigns are also controversial. While almost all of the smokers interviewed planned on quitting by graduation, they also noted that it was fundamentally an extremely personal choice.

At best, “some educational initiatives that don't try to tell me what to do remind me that it's unhealthy,” said one senior. At worst? “When [anti-smoking campaigns] are too in your face it just makes me want to say ‘f*** you’ and keep smoking.”

Last Cigarettes and Calculating Risk

If a student does choose to quit, it seems to be a process of tiny revelations. One ex-smoker interviewed, a senior feb, described sitting on a flight to Capetown, South Africa, and having a moment of clarity.

“I realized that I had been smoking since eighth grade and I was 21 years old…at this point in our lives, what can you say you’ve done for six years?” said the senior feb. “I had been smoking for six years, and that was the first moment that I really wanted to stop.”

She did not quit then, but stopped for a while. After trying Nicorette and dating a boy who would not allow her to smoke around him, she came back home to a group of friends who smoked, she picked up the habit again. And then, she says, when she came back in the fall, it stuck.

“I smoked for the first couple of weekends, and then was like, ‘I don’t need this in my life, I don’t need this, I just want to be healthy,’” said the senior Feb. “So I quit this past fall.”

So if anti-smoking campaigns are largely ineffective, and quitting is ultimately a personal decision, it seems like smoking on Middlebury Campus is here to stay. For many smokers, it boils down to what Han terms “calculated risk.” When asked why smokers choose to start, he fiddled with a Slim Jim, smiling.

“I think we all make sort of calculated decisions in what risks are…. I mean, I tend to eat Slim Jims a lot, and I know this is garbage. And I’m engaging in a behavior where that’s calculating the risk.”

It is often hard, with a subject so fraught with passion, to find common ground between smokers and nonsmokers. But something that the Djarum Black senior mentioned seems like a fitting conclusion. When asked what he would like nonsmokers to know about the subject of smoking, he replied: “We’re human beings too, I’ve got a mom and a dad and a little sister. I’m not just a smoker, I’m a person who smokes.”