Despite the associated risks and stigmas, cigarette, cigar and tobacco smoking have found their niche on Brown's campus.
Risky business
Students make up the majority of buyers of cigarettes and other tobacco products at Thayer Street supermarket Tedeschi, according to cashiers Tim Hidalgo and Albert "Big Bertus" Saldana.
Hidalgo and Saldana agreed that cigarette sales amount to about 100 packs per day, give or take 50.
"Brown students definitely smoke a lot of cigarettes," Hidalgo said.
He added that most of their revenue comes from tobacco products, which also include cigars, chewing tobacco and rolling tobacco.
Roshan Baral, the owner of Thayer Street convenience store Metro Mart, said he sells about 80 packs of cigarettes and 30 cigars per day. About 75 percent of people buying these products are students, he said.
Students who smoke commented that cigarettes are far more expensive in Rhode Island than in other states, and some roll their own cigarettes to save money.
The Obama administration outlawed flavored cigarettes last year because of suspicions that they were marketed to children and got them addicted at a young age.
Metro Mart lost a few customers due to the ban, but Baral said their tobacco-related business has been steadily increasing overall.
Tedeschi switched to flavored cigars. "It's the same thing. You just can't call them flavored cigarettes," Saldana said.
"They market them as cigars now, but they are cigarettes," Timothy Nassau '12 said. "Sorry, Obama."
‘A rebellion thing'
Some students said they began casually smoking during their early adolescence, but did not become regular smokers until college granted them the freedom to buy their own cigarettes.
"Most people who smoke in college smoked already occasionally," said Julie Cardenas '13, who began smoking in high school with a friend whose parents always had cigarettes around the house.
Ann Kremen '13 smoked her first cigarette on her 18th birthday because "it was the most aggressively independent thing that I could think to do," she said.
Rory MacAneney '14, on the other hand, became a smoker at age 14 as "a rebellion thing" but quit just in time for college.
MacAneney said college made it easier to quit because she was changing a lot of lifestyle habits anyway. She added that she knows very few students who smoke regularly, but several who smoke exclusively when they drink alcohol.
Some students thought the distribution of smokers on campus depended on their academic fields. "English kids and (Modern Culture and Media) kids and all of those seem to smoke significantly more than science kids," said Andrew Doty '12.
"After my English class, like half the class is smoking," he said.
Doty added that this trend might occur because science students see "the fact side of it," whereas humanities students more likely think of "Humphrey Bogart smoking cigarettes in ‘Casablanca' " and "romanticize it."
"There are more cigarette butts outside of the Rock than the (Sciences Library)," said Nassau. "Most in front of List, if anything."
According to the Office of Student Life website, "smoking is prohibited in all Brown residential and dining facilities."
Nassau said he wishes the school would have more ashtrays around campus so that he could at least smoke without littering.
An appealing aroma?
Several student smokers said they enjoy the social aspect of cigarette breaks.
"It's really relaxing," Kremen said.
"When you're at the steps of the Rock or something, there's always someone smoking," Cardenas said, adding that she is "trying to cut back" and wants to quit someday.
"When you think about the future," she said, "you don't want to be 70 and still chain-smoking." Still, she said, "I always felt like I was going to die young anyways."
"I want to quit right now," Nassau said, having picked up the habit during high school when he studied abroad in France. "I always thought I could stop when I wanted to," but quitting has proved more difficult than expected, he added.
On one hand, smoking "is bad for your health, obviously," doesn't work as "an emotional crutch when I'm feeling depressed or stressed" and "makes me smell bad," Nassau said. On the other, smoking is "like going to get a coffee at a cafe. It's a social activity that you can do with someone else and that you can enjoy," he added.
Nassau also said smoking has the allure of "feeling like you look cool with a cigarette," adding that he knows people "who don't smoke but hold a cigarette in their hands and feel better about themselves."
Smoking scorn
Many students said they didn't pick up cigarettes under peer pressure, though some feel pressured to stop.
A 2002 study published in College Student Journal found that two-thirds of college students in Florida found smoking unattractive and about half considered it socially unacceptable.
In the fall 2009 Herald poll, 18.3 percent of undergraduates said they had used tobacco in the previous month. About one-third of all Rhode Island college students responding to a 2008 University of Massachusetts study said they had smoked in the prior 30 days.
College students generally overestimate the prevalence of smoking on their campuses, Director of Health Education Frances Mantak wrote in an e-mail to The Herald. Though 7 percent of Brown students in 2009 reported using tobacco 1-3 times per month, Mantak wrote, the popular perception would be closer to 50 percent. The same survey found that 6.6 percent of Brown undergrads use tobacco weekly.
"College can be a time when people develop habits around smoking that can be very hard to change once they graduate," Mantak wrote.
For the Brown student body, smokers constitute a minority. "Patterns of smoking at Brown tend to be lower than the national norms for their age group and for local college students," wrote Nancy Barnett, associate professor at Brown's Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, in an e-mail to The Herald.
"The general Brown culture is anti-smoking," Kremin said. Still, "having somebody tell you to stop isn't actually very helpful," she said, adding that her friends are "respectful enough not to make it an issue."
"There's a total social stigma attached to smoking," MacAneney said.
Cardenas said that some strangers once approached her while she was smoking outside a party, informing her that she would get cancer.
The risk of cancer isn't enough to scare kids away from smoking, said Kamil Witek '14, who suggested that health educators warn students that smokers are "not going to be able to get erections."
"I don't get why you would smoke because it doesn't have any interesting effects" like those of alcohol or drugs, Witek said.
Though he makes money off others' smoking habits and used to smoke, Saldana went as far as to say that tobacco should be considered a drug. "How many people die of cancer from cigarettes compared to people who die from weed?"
