Young adults embrace deathly ritual
Call a stop-smoking hot line? Talk to someone else. That’s the reaction — again and again — when I approach people I know constantly lighting up.
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 Call a stop-smoking hot line? Talk to someone else. That’s the reaction — again and again — when I approach people I know constantly lighting up. I see them huddle. Smoking. Before lunch. After lunch. On break. Around the clock. Eagerly, as if sharing a secret, they lean in for a flame, then sit back to indulge. I worry, often asking why they do it, not wanting to see them harmed. The majority of Asian Pacific Islanders pick up the habit as young adults. Nearly half of the general smoking population starts from the ages of 18 to 21, according to the California Department of Health Services. Giao Ph?m, 35, has been puffing since the first day he arrived on campus when he was 18 years old. “It’s official, you’re an adult now,” an upperclassman told Ph?m, a mechanical-engineering major at Polytechnic University of Sài Gòn. “This is to celebrate.” At first he coughed and coughed, dragging on Jets, Thai cigarettes. But he stuck to it. “Everyone around me was smoking. It was a big deal, a reward for having gotten to college at a time when getting to college was very significant,” he recalls. “Keep in mind that we were in a school with 400 men versus five women. And the men smoked.” “I can handle it,” Ph?m, of Westminster, Calif., told me recently. In his family, it’s the in thing — with his dad, with his brothers, with all his pals. Same with Mark Park of Irvine, Calif., addicted for a dozen years and in keeping with other 20-somethings who think they are invincible — even as 435,000 people die annually in the United States from tobacco use. Consider: Cigarettes kill more men and women than car accidents, suicide, homicide, AIDS, alcohol and illegal drugs combined, according to the American Cancer Society. In California’s Orange County, Park is part of the 39.1 percent of Asians who smoke every day — compared with 29.5 percent of whites — according to a report from the Asian and Pacific Islander American Health Forum. And it’s as natural to him as shaving. “I like the feeling that you always have something to turn to, a ritual,” he notes. “Several times in the morning, and the evening. I can quit any time I want to. I don’t need any help.” Brave words. I don’t believe them. The California Smokers’ Helpline averages 2,988 calls a month— nearly 8 percent coming from Asians — and it is pushing to reach more. Koreans call the most, 28.6 percent, statistics show. This fits with the state’s research that among Asian subpopulations in 2002, people of Korean descent had the highest smoking prevalence rate: 19.8 percent, followed by Japanese with 14.6 percent, Filipino with 12.6 percent and Chinese with 8.8 percent. Once someone hooks up to (800) NO-BUTTS, he or she is matched up with a counselor who speaks one of six available languages: English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Spanish and Korean. They offer resources. “Are you ready to quit?” they immediately ask. If not, materials are sent to encourage the individual to think about it, seriously. If yes, there is counseling. An initial session lasts nearly 40 minutes, followed by reading guides, followed by more calls, 10-15 minutes in length, when the smoker is relapse-sensitive. “I’m very passionate about interacting and making sure we’re behind them,” says Marilyn de la Cruz, outreach specialist. She tried inhaling once, in high school, didn’t jive with it, plus her “father ruled with an iron fist and smoking was absolutely not permitted.” She and her co-workers try to get their clients “to see the realistic consequences behind smoking in their individual lives,” set target goals and, most importantly, a quit date. Asians are keen on immediate results, but “we let them know that becoming a nonsmoker is a process,” de la Cruz and her specialists say. Ph?m isn’t convinced that anyone can convince him. The young are hard to sway, he says. “A mother and father have no influence. And cigarettes,” he adds, “they’re a perfect complement to coffee.”
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