Alternative Health Blog

Big Tobacco might have lost some rounds with state government lawsuits, but cigarette companies are running up the score on college campuses like a Top 10 football team playing a weak nonconference opponent. A new report from the American Lung Association shows an “unacceptably high” one of five college students are smokers.

The Lung Association looked at the issue from both sides. It surveyed students at 119 American colleges and kids at 109 schools confirmed they are consistently exposed to tobacco promotions at campus events. Citing last available numbers, the researchers said tobacco companies spent more than $1 million per day, on average, during the 2005-06 school year to fund events and giveaways aimed at college students.

Here’s one reason why Big Tobacco is primed with promotional dollars on campus. Many college kids are social or occasional smokers. Cigarette companies exploit that experimentation and look to make products available in hopes of converting the social smokers into habitual smokers. Bernadette A. Toomey, president and CEO of the Lung Association, said “every college student in American has a target on [his/her] back as far as the tobacco industry is concerned.”

What should bother parents, administrators and even the students themselves even more is the profound adverse impact that a smoking habit brings to the typical adult life. The risk of lung cancer is obvious—even if it did decades too long to become fact—but researchers continue to find that smoking accelerates heart disease and stroke.

For example, a recent Norwegian study presented at a meeting of the European Society of Cardiology revealed that women who are regular smokers will suffer heart attacks more than a dozen years earlier than women who don’t smoke. The male gap is six years between smokers and smokers.

What’s more, women who smoke put themselves into the risk category of all males, who tend to have heart attacks earlier in life than females. Among the nearly 1,800 adults followed at a Lillehammer hospital in Norway, the men on average had their first heart attack at age 72 if they didn’t smoke and at 64 if they were habitual smokers.

For women who don’t smoke, on average, they suffer first heart attacks at 81 but at 66 if they are smokers. Notice that female smoker age is just a couple years behind male smokers and six years earlier than non-smoker men. Remember these are Norwegian numbers, not necessarily American heart attack age points, but it is still instructive that smoking can wipe out any female advantage.

Scientists believe women avoid heart attacks in mid-life because raised levels of the hormone estrogen are believed to also raise HDL or good cholesterol that cleans out plaque from the blood vessels, lowering the chance for blockage. Once women go through menopause, the protective effect diminishes. The theory is smoking will push a woman into menopause sooner.

None of that probably matters much to college females or males. But that doesn’t mean we don’t make them aware of Big Tobacco’s target on their backs.

Bob Condor blogs for the Alternative Health Journal every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.