One hour – one hundred pounds of trash collected during FRC Earth Day event

On Earth Day, April 22, Feather River College hosted a trash pickup competition, sponsored by the Smoke Free High Country Project, and the grand prize was awarded to the team that picked up the most waste.

In just one hour, over 100 pounds of trash were collected, including vapes, cigarette butts, and dip cans. This event brought together students, faculty, staff, and Plumas County Public Health’s Tobacco Use Reduction Program (TURP) in support of a cleaner tobacco-free campus. Feather River College took advantage of this event to help prepare students for the adoption of a tobacco-free campus policy which it plans to implement this year.

The Smoke Free High County project, a division of the California Health Collaborative, is supporting Feather River College, College of the Siskiyous, and Lassen Community College in their efforts to improve campus health by reducing tobacco use. The project is leading college task forces, hiring a paid college health advocacy coordinator at each campus, and hosting events, such as the Earth Day trash pickup competition, that provide health education and promote cessation services.

The first major move toward tobacco-free campuses was in 2014 when the University of California System banned tobacco use on all of its campuses. In 2017 the California State University system followed.

Additionally, 66 percent of community colleges are now tobacco-free. This trend toward healthier campuses is now growing in northern California community colleges.

Tobacco use rates in northern California are nearly double the state average due to the inequities associated with rural life. A staggering 99 percent of adults who smoke start before age of 26.

Physiological addiction to nicotine makes quitting extremely difficult. An average person takes 10 attempts before successfully quitting, which indicates just how essential tobacco-free policies are to remove triggers and help smokers quit.

While big tobacco has long marketed the idea that tobacco reduces stress, that is a myth. Nicotine addiction both increases stress and reduces the ability of the user to effectively deal with stressful situations. This means that by helping students quit tobacco and creating tobacco-free campus policies to reduce the likelihood of students becoming addicted, colleges will increase the likelihood of students graduating. With the invention of e-cigarette technology, nicotine addiction among high school students, which had been on the decline for decades, has shot back up to 38.9 percent. This is why taking action at college campuses is now more important than ever.

For more information, follow the effort on Facebook and Instagram @smokefreehighcountry or get involved by contacting Smoke Free High Country’s Project Director, Amanda Berryhill [email protected]. The health collaborative is recruiting paid part-time college health advocacy coordinators that attend one of the colleges involved in the project.