Milpitas Native''s Research on Tobacco Usage at San Jose Leads to Campus Change

Source from:  Milpitas Post 12/17/2014

Change is coming to San Jose State University's campus, with President Mohammad Qayoumi issuing a directive Nov. 20 to make San Jose State a smoke- and tobacco-free place by Aug. 1, 2015.

This directive was based on research and a survey that Milpitas High School class of 2009 graduate Isra Ahmad worked on as part of Campuses Organized & United for Good Health, or COUGH, at San Jose State while she was a student. The research involved asking students, staff and administration about their attitudes toward smoking and whether they would support a smoke-free campus. She said 65 percent of the 2,300 participants favored a campus without smoke.

In January 2013, shortly after graduating as a health science major, Ahmad was named one of four youth activism fellows for Legacy, a national nonprofit dedicated to reducing tobacco usage among youth and helping smokers quit.

Since then she has been working to gauge student, staff and faculty opinion and awareness of new and emerging tobacco product usage on campus.
Between April and June 2014 she returned to San Jose State and worked with COUGH to question students and staff using paper and online surveys.

The data collected from 1,160 individuals on the campus of 23,881 undergraduates indicated that hookah, a waterpipe used to pass charcoal-heated air through a tobacco mixture and a water-filled chamber, and electronic cigarettes, are growing in popularity.

Of those polled, 9.85 percent said they smoked cigarettes; 6.33 percent smoked small cigars/cigarillos; 8.79 percent said they smoked hookah (water pipe, shisha); and 10.73 percent said they smoked e-cigarettes.

About 40.72 percent of respondents said they used tobacco products because they are experimenting; 36.49 percent said they used it for flavor; 33.76 used it as a stress reliever; 11.10 percent used it because of peer pressure; and 3.95 percent used it because of family influence.

Ahmad, 23, has been working with COUGH to break down the data for the campus, as well as come up with an implementation and enforcement plan in line with Qayoumi's directive, which she often has to do remotely because she is in the first year of the public health masters program at the University of California at Berkeley.

Participants in the campus survey, the bulk of whom were students, were also asked to compare traditional cigarettes to cigars, e-cigarettes and hookah in regard to how harmful they believed they are.

About 48 percent of respondents said cigars were just as harmful, 46.8 percent said they were more harmful; 4.9 percent said they were less; 48.8 percent said hookah was just as harmful; 24.7 percent said they were more harmful; 26.5 percent said they were less; 39.2 percent said e-cigarettes were just as harmful; 16 percent said e-cigarettes were more harmful; and 44.87 percent said they were less harmful.

"I think that I was expecting there to be an increase in new and emerging products; it was surprising that hookah surpassed e-cigarettes and it was interesting to see that cigarette use is lower than the other products, and I think that has to do with the fact that there is no legal restriction on e-cigarettes," Ahmad said.

She said e-cigarette usage is seeing an increase nationwide because they are easily accessible, and can be purchased online and in vending machines. According to statistics from Legacy, as of May 2014, 34 states have prohibited the sale of e-cigarettes to minors and three states have included them in their indoor air laws and smoking ban.

"Technically speaking it's not seen as severe as traditional cigarettes are, but if you look at traditional history, cigarettes used to be accepted on planes and in restaurants, until they figured out how harmful they were, and we are still figuring out the effects of hookah and e-cigarettes," she said.
Ahmad said the increase in e-cigarettes' range of designs and flavors make them appealing to younger people.

According to statistics from Legacy, e-cigarette usage is highest among cigarette-smoking adults at 32 percent in 2012; and has doubled from 2011 to 2012 in middle school and high school users to 6.8 percent.

According to statistics from Legacy, 19 percent of 43.8 million Americans age 18 and older were smokers in 2011. That's one of six women and more than 21.6 percent of men.

In California, 13.8 percent of high school students smoke tobacco, and 13.7 percent of adults in California smoke, with more than 80 percent of those adults starting to smoke by the age of 18, according to statistics released by Legacy.

According to the American Lung Association, 48 percent of college students will have used hookah in their lifetime.

Ahmad said smoking hookah is worse than smoking a cigarette, because it is unfiltered tobacco, although the effects of hookah are still being researched.
"It depends on the duration as well, hookah is more of a social event, and people spend hours doing it. Smoking a cigarette takes one to two minutes so in that sense you are getting exposed to more tobacco," Ahmad said.

She will continue working on her project until her fellowship ends in July 2015.

"My overall goal for the fellowship is to first gauge this perception and empower students to make a change for their community and themselves. I hope with this data and with the president's directive we can make a plan to overall help the SJSU community."

She hopes to continue to work in the public health sector and work particularly on substance abuse. Enditem