By Danny Deza

Despite a decline in the past several years in the number of high school aged smokers nationwide, college students continue to smoke cigarettes and other tobacco products at roughly the same rate, as before a recent study suggests.

According to that study, performed by the federal government’s 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the most readily available data, 31 percent of full-time college students smoke, compared to 25 percent of the overall population, leaving young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 at the highest rate of tobacco users.

Peer pressure, social gatherings and new environments can influence college newcomers to experiment with new things, said counselor for alcohol and other drug substances Felix Fernandez Pizzi.

“One factor is that there are less restrictions in college than in high school, which can definitely affect the behavior on the individual,” Pizzi said. “Also, the added factor of increased stress in a college environment can lead students to pick up new habits that they might not have had before in high school.”

Pizzi said because cigarettes have nicotine, which is a stimulant, and act as a “pick me up,” they release chemicals, called neurotransmitters, into the brain, leading to short-term physical satisfaction, possibly relieving stress.

Ryan Secrist, a middler communication studies major, has been a smoker for the past two years and admits to starting his freshman year. He agreed with Pizzi and said the transition from high school to college was the source of the trend.

“A lot of my friends started smoking their freshman year, but as time goes on and we get older I have noticed more and more of my friends are quitting,” he said. “It starts out one a day on a regular basis, but then it slowly becomes three or four cigarettes a day. It can creep up on you.”

Within the past five years an alternative has entered the collegiate world: smoking tobacco out of hookahs, which have been on the rise and has become a popular demand among college students, as suggested by Smokeshop Magazine. In 2005 they reported that 200 to 300 hookah bars have opened since 2000 nationwide, many near college campuses.

Despite having one of his own, Secrist said he agrees that smoking tobacco out of a hookah has become a new trend among college students who feel it is more socially accepted than cigarettes.

“I think students feel it has become the new cool thing to do,” he said. “Many people think it is less dangerous and not as harmful to your body but in reality it is still pretty bad.”

According to a 2008 report released by the American Lung Association, hookah smoke contains similar hazardous components found in cigarette smoke, which have been linked to heart disease, cancer and addiction.

As high school student smokers are on the decline, some college campuses have been adopting the smoke free alternative. The American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation reports that as of 2007 nearly 60 college campuses around the United States have smoke-free policies that affect their entire campus.

James O’Brien, the Resident Student Association’s Student Center Governing Board Representative, said Northeastern would have a hard time implementing this restriction due to living in such a big city and students’ dependency on cigarettes as a stress reliever.

“I think banning smoking on college campuses will create an addiction to something else and that is not a good idea,” O’Brien said.

However, Pizzi said he thinks it is a policy that could change future generations.

“Banning smoking all together is a new affective way to stop smoking and [I’d like] to see how it will affect statistics in future reports,” he said.