The three day anti-smoking event working under the CDS-project (To Care To Dare To Share) started eagerly in February 2 at Tampere University of Applied Sciences. Interesting meters or maybe the sweets gathered people around and the students as well as the staff wanted to test their lungs. The FVC-meter indicated the lung capacity in liters and the PEF-meter indicated the peak expiratory flow. Everybody got proper figures or even better than expected and the young smokers were happy about their (so far) healthy lungs. Still they got some friendly advice about the lungs getting weaker among the age and smoking years.The idea of the project was to tell about the new smoking area behind the Q-wing and to move the smokers there from the main entrance. Of course we also tried to wake smokers to think about the health issues of smoking and possibly quit.
We interviewed twentyfive smokers and asked their opinion about reducing smoking. Answerers’ average age was 25 years and eighteen of them were men and seven of them were women. Over a half of the answerers were studying technical studies. There were eleven people who had been smoking over seven years and one had been smoking less than a year. The rest have been smoking from two to six years. Sixteen of the answerers were smoking as a habit for example on recess and eleven people said they were smoking more when stressed. The biggest reasons in starting to smoke were friends and upper secondary school or later studies. The positive thing is that eighteen of these people have tried to quit smoking and four of them have succeeded.
Other positive thing was how the smokers reacted on non-smoking. Only three people thought that the smoking law considering restaurants and stores was a bad thing when eleven people saw it as a good thing. Ten answerers thought that forbidding smoking in restaurants was good but hiding the cigarettes in stores is foolish.
Also propositions about reducing smoking came up and the most popular choice was the electric cigarettes. Only two of the interviewed people thought that smoking is everybody’s own decision and it doesn´t have to be reduced. Of course everybody makes their own decisions but also the non-smokers should have a choice about having to breathe smoke on the street waiting to get in to a bar. Seems that if you bow in one direction you´ll be showing your bottom to the other. Let´s still remember To Care To Dare To Share.
Thanks of these rewarding days for all of the participants!
Annemari Humaloja
