Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Donnie Aaron, Wichita freshman, tried to quit smoking six months after he started. He lasted a week.
Now he’s been smoking for three years and is up to a pack a day, he said.
“I started out smoking socially, and I still smoke socially,” he said. “But now I find myself smoking by myself too.”
Aaron said he planned to quit after college because he knew smoking wasn’t healthy for him.
But, said Ken Sarber, health educator with Student Health Services, quitting after graduation might not be so easy.
“The numbers show that students who don’t quit before graduation become smokers for life,” he said.
To provide students with information about how to quit smoking, Sarber and his team of peer educators offer four Smokeouts a year. This year’s first is today.
Though Smokeouts in the past have targeted tobacco use, Sarber said, this year the KU Smokeouts will offer information on marijuana use too.
Sarber said the main goal of the Smokeouts was to start conversations with tobacco users who needed help.
“Smokers aren’t used to people coming up to them to help them in a non-aggressive way,” he said.
Sarber said he scheduled four Smokeouts a year in the hope that students would retain what he said and remember him when they wanted to quit. He said he also hoped the Smokeouts would encourage students to ask for help.
Marie Wilcox, Chicago sophomore and coordinator of peer health education, said a number of her friends smoked socially, but were too embarrassed to smoke on campus.
“In a college setting, it’s easy for people to think it’s OK to smoke socially,” she said. “But really, nicotine is an addictive drug and can form a really bad habit.”
Sarber said the other goal of the Smokeouts was to help students who want to quit understand that they don’t have to do it alone and to help them identify resources on campus.
“When some smokers try to quit, they find out that their addiction levels are too high to quit on their own,” he said.
Sarber and the peer educators also will be distributing information fliers about a free service for University students known as KanUQuit.
KanUQuit is an opportunity from Student Health Services for students to receive one-on-one assistance in the battle to quit smoking, Sarber said.
“When you see how difficult it can get to quit smoking, it makes you want to help people more and more,” he said.
He said he worked with students to cut down their craving times to get to a first quit date, after which the student stops smoking for a week. Then, he said, the students come back into his office to talk about the experience, make adjustments and prepare for a two-week smoking hiatus. He said students either graduated from the program after the two-week stopping period, or he continued to work with the student to help them quit.
KanUQuit started in January 2008. Since then, Sarber said, he’s helped 35 people quit smoking.
He said he wanted students who want to quit using tobacco to remember not to be too proud to ask for help and not to become discouraged if they didn’t successfully quit. He said the average person tried to quit smoking five or six times before they were successful.
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