Tobacco topic of tailgate
November 19, 2014
By Jacqueline Smither
UK’s Tobacco Free Tailgate will celebrate its fifth anniversary on Thursday. The outdoor event will take place on the Rose Street walkway at the Mining and Minerals Building. It will last from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The tailgate was organized by the UK Tobacco-Free Campus Initiative, University Health Service, the Student Health Advisory Council and the College of Pharmacy.
Before the tobacco-free policy was put in place in November 2009, about 49 percent of UK students reported using tobacco products, wrote health education and marketing coordinator Fadyia Lowe in an email to the Kentucky Kernel. Since the institution of the tobacco-free policy, that number has decreased by about 30 percent, the university estimates.
The tailgate is held on the date when the university went tobacco-free, Lowe wrote. The third Thursday of November is also the day of the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smokeout.
Lowe said students and attendees can play games like tobacco-related Jeopardy and corn hole and throw Frisbees.
Prizes will be drawn as well, Lowe wrote, and the first 300 students who attend will receive a free t-shirt. There will be a photo booth available. The UK Cheerleaders will also make an appearance and join in the festivities.
The event will also provide cold turkey sandwiches, s’mores and hot chocolate, Lowe wrote in the email. The food coincides with the tobacco-free motto that encourages tobacco users not to go “cold turkey,” but learn “s’more” about how to quit.
Because its success rate is less than five percent, the tobacco tailgate does not encourage quitting “cold turkey,” Lowe wrote in the email.
Despite the recent drop in temperatures, Lowe added that the Rose St. walkway is busy enough that the event should see plenty of students passing through.
