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Journalism Award Winner : Fall 2000: First Place
by Erin Crapser and Brian Goldsmith
The Harvard Westlake Chronicle
Harvard Westlake School, North Hollywood, CA
Mike Hurley (‘00) is in his backyard as he draws in, enjoying his fifth cigarette of the day. And he does enjoy it. He would not join the almost universal chorus of teen smokers who are, as one senior girl here said, "desperate to quit." His parents know he smokes and "are not worried." His friends are "nonchalant" about it, he says.
Hurley says the cigarettes relax him; they’re like "listening to music." And besides, he doesn’t think they are harmful anyway—just as long as people realize that "modernization is key."
"Sure, cigarettes can make you sick, but so can anything, so can Coca-Cola. You can get cavities…And there are all the billboards telling you (cigarettes) give you cancer, but cancer is really so predominant due to the diet in Western society," Hurley said.
While the specifics may seem far out, Hurley is perhaps not far off in his approach to a habit of 26 percent of the upper school, according to a Chronicle poll taken last week. While all have heard the risks, not all believe them—or, more precisely, not all view them as possibly affecting their own lives.
Kids here start for varied reasons—peer pressure, a desire to fit in, an effort at weight control, even simple curiosity—and often it becomes an unintentional habit, sometimes lasting a shortened lifetime. They begin from as young as nine years of age to the seemingly wiser late teen years, according to the recent poll, and almost all have tried to quit, mostly futilely, mostly multiple times.
Nationally, according to a survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late last year, 28.4 percent of high schoolers reported using tobacco products in the preceding month, a figure that decreased for the first time this decade. But nearly one in ten students has already smoked cigarettes by middle school.
Some of the country’s decrease in teen smoking has been attributed to the approximately 45 cents per pack boost in the price in cigarettes resulting from last year’s $206 billion national tobacco settlement. On top of this increase, states may add their own taxes, such as the additional 50 cents per pack paid in California as a result of the passage of Proposition 10 two years ago. The settlement also included barring the tobacco industry from running advertisements featuring cartoon characters (such as Joe Camel) which anti-smoking advocates say are aimed at young people. In many places, those billboards have been replaced by anti-smoking messages.
No students here, though, credited the Marlboro Man for encouraging them to first light up.
Murky rationale
"I was stoned and I heard that (smoking cigarettes) increased your high...The first time you smoke you get this incredible buzz, and you just keep wanting to regain it. I keep wanting to get it back," a senior boy said. Other students don’t have such concrete reasons for smoking.
A common refrain from those who use cigarettes regularly is an inability to pinpoint precisely why their smoking becomes habit. "I don’t really know why it became a habit, it just did…it’s stupid; it’s not worth," a junior boy said. A sophomore girl agreed, lamenting, "It just kind of happened. And I hate it."
Stephanie Roach (’01), who doesn’t smoke, thinks that many people who smoke do so for purely social reasons. "A lot of my friends are 'social smokers'…they’re doing it not because they like doing it but because they want to give off a certain impression," she said.
Roach also believes that friends greatly influence the decision to smoke cigarettes.
"Who you’re friends with really affects whether you smoke or not. I think that if my good friends did, maybe I would. You start to pick up habits from them," she said.
Roach has observed the most commonly cited reason for smoking among students here—and around the nation. Of our poll respondents who said that they smoked, 46 percent said they did so because their peers smoked. And nationally, according to the CDC, young smokers are more motivated to do so by their friends than by any other source.
Others cited stress relief as reason to light up. "It’s just a way to settle my nerves," a senior boy said. One senior girl commented, "Junior year. I think that’s explanation enough" for why she became a smoker. Another senior girl explained that how often she smokes depends on "how nervous I am, how upset I am, if I feel some kind of weakness; it’s very calming."
Some also mention weight control as a rationale for continuing their habit—since the typical smoker gains an average of eight pounds when he quits, according to the 1991 study by the CDC. But Dr. Joanne E. Manson, an endocrinologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, responds that a person would have to gain more than 100 pounds to equal the health risks of smoking two packs of cigarettes.
Reactions
Not surprisingly, most parents express a strong antipathy to the possibility of their children’s smoking. A senior boy who smokes said, "if (his parents) found out, they’d disown me."
A junior boy who recently quit expressed similar statements. "If (my parents) found out, they’d probably have me killed. It would be the worst situation imaginable."
He added, "they know I drink, so that’s not a big deal. They would see smoking as worse because that’s something you could do on a regular basis, ‘cause that’s a habit. They know that my drinking is occasional and isn’t addictive—so they don’t care that much." In fact, a Chronicle poll in November showed that 54 percent of upper school students are social drinkers, as compared to the 26 percent who responded this month as smokers.
Often, given what are nearly universally perceived to be serious health risks, non-smokers are baffled by the seeming recklessness with which others approach the habit.
"It always amazes me how these really smart students can make a choice that is just so clearly detrimental to their health and lives," Junior-Senior Dean Sharon Merrow said. "I know I sound like such an adult, but it’s true," she added.
The health risks are tremendous—of the 3000 teens estimated to begin smoking every day, approximately 1000 will die prematurely because of it. In other words, every 13 seconds someone dies from tobacco use. According to the American Cancer Society, it is the single most preventable cause of mortality—and smoking causes more deaths every year than fires, auto crashes, alcohol, cocaine, heroin, AIDS, murders, and suicides combined.
Radiation oncologist Dr. Michael Steinberg warns that even short-term smoking can irritate the respiratory tract level and possibly result in infection.
A senior girl added, "I’m aware of all the health risks, and that’s why I’ve decided to definitely stop before college…smoking in high school, I think, is a pretty normal thing and won’t affect me that much down the line."
Steinberg counters, "I’ve seen very serious cases of emphysema in people who have only been smoking for seven to 10 years. Not everyone who smokes gets lung cancer, but everyone who smokes suffers from emphysema, which is characterized by a loss of lung tissue… in some cases, there is loss to an extent that is detectable on an x-ray. Interestingly, the severity of individual cases of emphysema is not directly related to the length of time the person has been smoking."
Sufferers of emphysema experience difficulty exerting themselves physically as a result of impaired lung function. "At first they have difficulty walking great distances, get out of breath easily…and can become wheelchair bound. I’ve seen patients in hospices who are so air-hungry that they become panicky," Steinberg said.
Breaking the habit
Many smokers, like the senior girl, don’t think these long-term consequences will affect them, because they don’t think that they will be life-long smokers. A University of Michigan survey found that only five percent of high school seniors who smoke daily think that they will definitely be smoking in five years, but almost 75 percent still smoke five to six years later.
A senior boy in the oft-repeated process of "cutting-back" said, "I definitely don’t want it to be a lifelong habit because then I’ll die—so hopefully [I’ll quit] after college."
Quitting can be one of the more excruciating experiences of a smoker’s life—confirmed by recent studies demonstrating that the nicotine content in certain cigarettes makes it as difficult a habit to stop as heroin. Most smokers though—nearly 50 percent of those polled here, approximately 36 percent nationally according to the Michigan survey—have tried to quit, usually not successfully.
Athletes have a particular interest in quitting because any breathing impairment can be detrimental to their participation. Hurley said, "I once quit for two months because I began to feel the smoking in my lungs when I was swimming, but then I started again."
The sophomore girl said, "I don’t think it affects my sports, but it could if I keep doing it." The senior boy said, "It started to affect my ability to perform in my extra-curricular [activities], so now I’m just a social smoker—or, I’m trying to be." By "social smoker," he means only using cigarettes on the weekends.
Echoing a common sentiment among smokers and non-smokers alike, the sophomore girl said, "I think it’s a dumb habit, and it’s kind of gross. I’ll stop by the end of this school year…hopefully.
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