Without a cigarette, smokers become restless, anxious and irritable but also healthier.
On Thursday, the American Cancer Society's 36th Great American Smokeout will encourage smokers to kick their nicotine addictions.
Designed to encourage smokers to quit on that date, the event is being held in honor of Lung Cancer Awareness Month.
UF organizations such as the Tobacco-Free Task Force, Area Health Education Centers Program, GatorWell Health Promotion Services and Eta Sigma Gamma will promote the event by tabling on campus.
Last year, 68.8 percent of American adult smokers wanted to quit and 52.4 percent tried to quit. But only 6.2 percent recently succeeded, meaning they quit in the past year and had not smoked for at least six months, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC defines a smoker as someone who has had at least 100 cigarettes in his or her life.
A Healthy Gators survey in Spring 2010 found 8 percent of students used tobacco in the last 30 days of when the survey was given. But only 2 percent surveyed to smoke on a daily basis, said Jane Emmeree, a GatorWell Health Promotions Services specialist.
The survey was done before UF became a tobacco-free campus July 1, 2010.
The university does not enforce the policy.
English sophomore Kyle Heuser, 19, doesn't pay attention to the recommendation not to smoke.
"UF owns the building and land, but not the air," he said.
Emmeree said GatorWell wouldn't know how effective the policy is until the next Healthy Gator survey in 2013.
GatorWell offers a quit program and one-on-one counseling with a quit coach, who can help a person assess what triggers him or her to smoke.
"If [you] combine behavioral counseling with quit medication, it more than doubles the chances of successfully quitting," said Kathy Nichols, co-chair of the UF Tobacco-Free Task Force and assistant director with the UF Area Health Education Centers program, which offers group counseling for quitting tobacco.
