Cutting out the risk
Two years ago, an alumnus from Justin Green's fraternity house asked Green to buy him cigarettes. "I went to the store and bought the wrong ones," said Green, an economics senior. But instead of getting rid of them, Green, a one-time health-conscious athlete in high school, said he ended up smoking them himself. "I never even tried a cigarette my entire life until I came to Michigan State," he said. Nursing senior Hillary Pasch, who spent Wednesday night preparing for today's Great American Smokeout, hopes the message behind the event will reach those like Green. "We see firsthand the effect that tobacco has on our patients and all of their family," said Pasch, who is the president of the MSU Nursing Student Association. For the Great American Smokeout, an awareness day sponsored by the American Cancer Society designed to help smokers quit, Pasch joined about 50 other students to write anti-smoking messages with sidewalk chalk around campus. In hospitals, Pasch has worked with people who have everything from heart problems to asthma as a result of smoking. "Smoking has such a negative effect on people," Pasch said.
