No abstract

The objective of the present study was to describe how college students perceive the risks of cigarette smoking and addiction to nicotine. Data came from a self-administered survey of 1,020 college students enrolled in two 4-year liberal arts colleges in the United States. The survey was conducted in the fall of 2001. Smokers and nonsmokers differed markedly in their perceptions about the health risks associated with short-term exposure to smoking. College students in this sample who smoked did not fully comprehend the risks associated with smoking. Smokers were half as likely as nonsmokers to believe that there are health risks from smoking only on weekends or a couple of days a week. Anti-tobacco messages for young adult smokers need to communicate more effectively the concept that each cigarette they smoke is doing them damage.

This study provides estimates of the long-term cumulative impact of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s national tobacco education campaign, Tips From Former Smokers (Tips), on population-level smoking cessation. We used recently published estimates of the association between increased Tips campaign media doses and quit attempts to calculate campaign-attributable population sustained (6-month) quits during 2012–2015. Tips led to approximately 522,000 sustained quits during 2012–2015. These findings indicate that the Tips campaign’s comprehensive approach to combining evidence-based messages with the promotion of cessation resources was successful in achieving substantial long-term cigarette cessation at the population level over multiple years.

What is already known on this topic? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Tips From Former Smokers (Tips) campaign is associated with increased quit attempts among specific populations of people who smoke, including African Americans, pregnant women, people with mental health conditions, and those with lower educational attainment. The campaign increases calls to smoker quitlines and visits to the Tips website and other cessation resources. What is added by this report? During 2012-2018, the Tips campaign was associated with an estimated 16.4 million quit attempts and more than 1 million sustained quits among US adults. What are the implications for public health practice? Mass media campaigns, such as the Tips campaign, can increase smoking quit attempts and sustained quits as part of a comprehensive approach to reducing smoking-related disease and premature death in the United States.