While the past 40 years have seen significant declines in adult smoking, this is not the case among young adults, who have the highest prevalence of smoking of all other age groups. At a time when just about everyone knows that smoking is bad for you, why do so many college students smoke? Is it a short lived phase or do they continue throughout the college years? And what happens after college, when they enter the “real world”? Drawing on interviews and focus groups with hundreds of young adults, Lighting Up takes the reader into their everyday lives to explore social smoking. Mimi Nichter argues that we must understand more about the meaning of social and low level smoking to youth, the social contexts that cause them to take up (or not take up) the habit, and the way that smoking plays a large role in students’ social lives. Nichter examines how smoking facilitates social interaction, helps young people express and explore their identity, and serves as a means for communicating emotional states. Most college students who smoked socially were confident that “this was no big deal.” After all, they were “not really smokers” and they would only be smoking for a short time. But, as graduation neared, they expressed ambivalence or reluctance to quit. As many grads today step into an uncertain future, where the prospect of finding a good job in a timely manner is unlikely, their 20s may be a time of great stress and instability. For those who have come to depend on the comfort of cigarettes during college, this array of life stressors may make cutting back or quitting more difficult, despite one’s intentions and understandings of the harms of tobacco. And emerging products on the market, like e-cigarettes, offer an opportunity to move from smoking to vaping. Lighting Up considers how smoking fits into the lives of young adults and how uncertain times may lead to uncertain smoking trajectories that reach into adulthood.

This is the first book to document the history of cigarette advertising on college and university campuses. From the 1920s to the 1960s, such advertisers had a strong financial grip on student media and thus a degree of financial power over colleges and universities across the nation. The tobacco industry's strength was so great many doubted whether student newspapers and other campus media could survive without them. When the Tobacco Institute, the organization that governed the industry, decided to pull their advertising in June of 1963 nearly 2,000 student publications needed to recover up to 50 percent of their newly lost revenue. Although student newspapers are the main focus of this book, tobacco's presence on campus permeated more than just the student paper. Cigarette brands were promoted at football games, on campus radio and through campus representatives, and promotional items were placed on campus in locations such as university stores and the student union.

Background: Although cigarette smoking is decreasing in the US and among college students, tobacco use remains a major public health problem. Specific socioecological gaps in the literature related to college tobacco use exist including: trends of tobacco use, combinations of polysubstance use, and availability of tobacco products around college campuses. Objectives: The main goal of this research was the understand interrelationships that exist within a socioecological framework of college tobacco use. Specifically, this project aims to: 1) examine trends of tobacco and polytobacco use by gender and associations of polytobacco use and perceived peer tobacco use, 2) examine specific combinations of polysubstance use and how the resulting profiles of use differ by gender, and 3) evaluate tobacco retailer density around college campuses and in neighborhoods of Richmond, VA. Methods: Two chapters of this project use data from the National College Health Assessment II from 2008-2015. The third chapter uses data collected from electronic cigarette brand websites to geospatially examine tobacco retailers in the Richmond Virginia Metropolitan Statistical Area. Various statistical analyses were utilized to complete each project including linear, logistic, and negative binomial regression, latent class and confirmatory factor analysis, and spatial analysis. Results: Trends of some tobacco products among US college students declined while others remained stable from 2008-2015. Nearly 1 in 4 college students used a tobacco product and nearly 1 in 10 were polytobacco users. Alcohol and marijuana use remained stable. Specific classes of polysubstance users were found to exist between males and females, in addition to sociodemographic and institutional associations with polysubstance use by gender. College campuses in the Richmond area were found to have a substantial number of tobacco retailers and retailer density was higher in low socioeconomic status neighborhoods. Conclusions: The findings from the three different studies fill extensive gaps in the literature related to trends of college tobacco use, differences in classes of polyuse by gender, and availability of tobacco around college campuses. Overall, while tobacco use is declining, there are still a substantial proportion of college students who use tobacco and other substances and products appear to be readily available.

This booklet for schools, medical personnel, and parents contains highlights from the 2012 Surgeon General's report on tobacco use among youth and teens (ages 12 through 17) and young adults (ages 18 through 25). The report details the causes and the consequences of tobacco use among youth and young adults by focusing on the social, environmental, advertising, and marketing influences that encourage youth and young adults to initiate and sustain tobacco use. This is the first time tobacco data on young adults as a discrete population have been explored in detail. The report also highlights successful strategies to prevent young people from using tobacco.

Objective: A year after a tobacco free policy was passed, the University of South Florida (USF) was interested in the overall policy opinions and efficacy. To assess this a project was completed that included a survey and geospatial data. The survey measured tobacco policy enforcement behavior and a geographic information system (GIS) mapped tobacco policy violation. This project introduces an evaluation process that can efficiently assess an institutions tobacco-free policy. Methods: Using a cross-sectional survey sent to students, faculty, and staff, understanding of policy and resources, tobacco use observations, stage of change regarding policy enforcement, self-efficacy to enforce, and perceived policy impact on campus tobacco use (n = 5242) was evaluated. Additionally, using a GIS phone application volunteers gathered geospatial data on tobacco use seen on campus after policy enactment. Results: There was modest understanding of the current policy and low beliefs regarding policy enforcement. Most respondents answered that they do not approach violators to remind them of the policy and did not plan to do so in the future. There were statistically significant variations between smokers and non-smokers as well as between students and faculty and staff. The final map of witnessed tobacco use uncovered continued use on campus with 158 data points. Conclusions: Together, the violations map and survey results, illustrate the ineffectiveness of the current tobacco-free policy. The rise in tobacco-free policy enactment calls for inventive evaluation practices so institutions can efficiently assess their implementation. This ensures tobacco-free policies can achieve reduced tobacco use and exposure.