According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smoking among college students has been steadily on the decline in the past years, but many still suffer from an addiction to tobacco that they cannot shake.

“10 percent of the campus population smokes…anything we can do to decrease that is good, but it’s still a problem. It’ll always be a problem,” said Lauren Geary, project manager of the Illinois workplace wellness study.

In an effort to do this, the University adopted a program created by the American Lung Association, known as Freedom From Smoking.

“What we do is, since there’s no one right way to quit, is we don’t even have people quit until week four, because they need time to make a plan,” said Michele Guerra, director of the campus well-being services.

The FFS program is eight sessions over the course of seven weeks. The first three sessions are focused on making a plan for quitting.

“The fourth week is quit week and we meet twice, because quitting can be hell, so we hold two sessions 48 hours apart,” Guerra said. “Then the last three weeks have to do with relapse prevention, so how do we stay quit.”

One of the perks of the program is that it offers an individualized approach to overcoming addiction. Due to the smaller group sizes, coaches are able to work one-on one-with program participants in order to figure out how they are going to shed the addiction.

Guerra said they do this through an approach known as “the three A’s: avoid, alter, alternative,” which change the way the participant interacts with, perceives and engages with the tobacco product.

The program seeks to disrupt the physical, social and cultural aspects of addiction. Guerra said it’s also important to seek assistance outside of just the behavior-oriented program.

“People that are the most likely to quit and stay quit are people who combine some level of either nicotine replacement and/or medication with a behavioral approach,” she said.

Of course, it is also important to remember that “the average smoker makes eight to 10 attempts to quit before being successful,” said Talia Shaw, a health educator with the Champaign-Urbana health district.

Shaw said 13 percent of people aged 18 to 24 are smokers.

“Many college students tend to be what we call ‘social smokers,’ which are individuals that smoke in certain social situations or with certain people,” Shaw said. “It can be a challenge to reach the social smoking population, because they often do not consider themselves smokers.”

Despite health experts warning against excessive tobacco use, as Geary said, there’s still a couple hotspots where people like to hide out and smoke on the smoke-free campus.

Shaw said that smoking negatively affects nearly every organ in the body, and smokers are at a much greater risk to acute and chronic illnesses, diseases and cancers. She also said smoking is the cause of 90 percent of lung cancer deaths, and that smoking is the most preventable cause of death in the U.S.

“Addictions can lead to or exacerbate mental health conditions, and individuals with mental health conditions account for a high percentage of tobacco use,” she said. “Socially, smokers in previous groups I’ve facilitated often say that they feel chained to their tobacco products.”

There are many resources on campus to help smokers quit. McKinley offers services for undergraduates and the campus wellness’s Freedom From Smoking program offers it for graduates, faculty, and their significant others.

“There’s a general consensus that, as a community, clean air and healthy behaviors are something that we value and we’re going to enforce it,” Geary said.

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