By Kim Friel
Student Life Editor
Washington College’s Health Center is celebrating The American Cancer Society’s 35th annual Great American Smokeout on Nov 18. This day is to encourage current smokers to set a date to quit, create a plan, and to put it in action.
The Health Center is very knowledgeable on ways to quit smoking and offer its utmost support in those students who would like to quit.
“It is a myth that college students do not want to stop using tobacco products,” said Nurse Carol Thorton. “By the time college students have become regular users of chew tobacco and one-half to one park a day smokers, many are often disenchanted with tobacco use.” Thorton also explained the procedure the Health Center staff go through with a student who comes to the office wanting to quit their use of tobacco.
“We ask them to take The ‘Why I Smoke’ Test that we have here in the office and it let’s us have a better understanding on why they crave nicotine. After calculating their score we most likely find that students are infatuated with the ‘stimulation’ or ‘handling’ category of smoking.”
Scoring high on the stimulation part of the test most likely means “your brain prefers the stimulant effects of nicotine” while if one scores high on the handling part of the test, it most likely means that the smoker simply likes the feel of the cigarette in his hand or the smoke effect created.
After taking the test, the Health Center staff will offer medication such as Zyban, Nicoderm C.Q., or Commit Lozenges free of charge to help with the process because they too know the difficulties of quitting and that quitting ‘cold turkey’ seldom works.
There is also a new club on campus called Colleges Against Cancer, which will be supporting the Great American Smokeout and encouraging students to quit tobacco use. Stop by the Health Center on Nov 18 or anytime you are ready to start living a better, healthier tobacco-free life for confidential one-on-one support from the WC Health Center Staff.
I found that most people will only quit if they really want to quit. Some people, no matter how much they know about the side effects, still want to smoke!