By Austin Schmitt

A single pack of cigarettes holds the power. The power to darken lungs, cause shortness of breath and bury people. It also has the power to put food on the table, send kids through college and buy pickup trucks.

Tobacco surrounds UK’s campus, whether it is the fields lining the streets into Lexington or the smokers lining the hospital sidewalks on South Limestone.

Yet on Nov. 19, UK will turn its campus into a tobacco-free environment. No more smoke breaks behind White Hall Classroom Building. No more strolls through campus with a lit cigarette in hand. No more late night smoke breaks outside Blanding Tower on a long night of studying. Tobacco will no longer exist on this campus.

Some on this campus will tell stories of how cigarettes have killed their family. Others will say it provides a break to the stresses of college life.

But some are in the middle, like communications junior Derek Goode. Three weeks ago his mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. As a smoker, he sees the smoking ban as an opportunity to quit smoking. The struggle his mom will have to endure finalizes that decision.

“Just the fact that she has to go through it, I don’t want to do it myself,” Goode said.

But there is still opposition. English freshman Hannah Mayfield lights up a cigarette with her conventional grill lighter and talks about how the ban will inconvenience her while she is on campus.

“I really like to smoke before and after class, so it’s going to suck,” Mayfield said.

Leaving tobacco behind is something that many accomplished years ago, but in Kentucky this trend takes precedence. In this state a different, softer face emerges, a face that defines an entire industry the wrinkled, sun-beaten face of a tobacco farmer.

Giles Shell is one of those faces. A May 2009 graduate of UK with a degree in biology, Giles grew up on the farm. Playing in the tobacco fields since the day he could walk, Giles woke up every morning and worked alongside his 83-year-old grandfather, G.B. Shell.

Starting at the age of 14, Giles worked in the tobacco fields. Known on the Shell farm as a quiet kid growing up, he was more likely to want to cure cancer than farm tobacco.

But after graduating from UK, Giles believed his skills were needed somewhere else, so he returned to the farm.  He returned home to do the one thing he loves, the one thing he has known all his life, the one thing that paid for him to attend UK: farm tobacco.

“I’ve tried to do something else but I can’t do anything else,” Giles said. “It’s something I’ve done since I was young.”

For Giles though, tobacco is more than just a crop, it’s a way of life. He says that when people talk about how tobacco is bad for health, it bothers him. It’s the overuse of the product, not the actual tobacco that causes the problem.

He hears the future of tobacco being disputed but thinks that there will always be a need for the crop. Even then, the sake of his family depends on the plant that grows in his backyard.

“It’s my livelihood, it’s my life, it’s what feeds my family,” Giles said. “It’s what buys my vehicles so I can go from here to there.”

Giles’ story is not the only one. Will Snell, a UK agricultural economics extension professor, grew up on a tobacco and beef cattle farm in Bourbon Co., where tobacco was the main social function of Snell’s hometown and a constant throughout most small towns in Kentucky.

The first day of school is affected by the tobacco season. Originally a Labor Day tradition, the first day of school turned into a mid-September start. The kids had to help on the farm, Snell said.

The opening of the markets was a social scene in itself. From the local pastor to the town health care provider, every person in the community came to market.

“It was very much the social fabric of many of those rural communities here in Kentucky,” Snell said.

Most importantly for the Shell and Snell families, though, tobacco provided a way of living. Health ramifications aside, tobacco put food on the table and provided opportunities beyond the farm.

“During its hay day, tobacco paid the bills, it put a lot of kids through college, it bought a lot of new pickup trucks,” Snell said. “It was pretty much the safety net for agriculture and the crop that everybody depended on to pay the bills.”

The UK Agricultural Extension program provides the kind of support to the tobacco community that a flagship university is responsible for. By being active in the community, the program helps tobacco farmers yield productive crops every year and provides a way to connect the community to the university.

This year’s 28th annual edition of the Garrard County Tobacco Cutting Contest in September was put on by the UK Agricultural Extension program. Every year they work with the Garrard County community to showcase tobacco and bring tobacco farmers and community members together.

While eight regular tobacco field hands work tirelessly through the eighth of a mile of tobacco stalks, competing to raise the plaque given to the winner, attendees socialize, crack jokes and eat fresh-grilled hamburgers.  This is the way life is on the farm.  Where even though the future of tobacco is in jeopardy, there are still no worries.

On UK’s campus it’s a different story. The plans for a tobacco-free campus have been on the books since January 2009 when the Board of Trustees, with the backing of UK President Lee Todd, announced a Tobacco-Free Initiative. The committee would be co-chaired by UK College of Nursing Professor Ellen Hahn and Vice President for Public Safety Anthany Beatty.

On Nov. 19, UK will join among over 300 other college campuses in adopting a policy similar to this one, but they are one of the largest institutions to implement a ban. In a state where 50 percent of the domestic production of tobacco is performed, it has not come without controversy.

Despite the negative feedback of the tobacco ban, it has positives. The statistics on tobacco health are well-known. But the common college student may not know what just one cigarette can do to the body.

Casual smoking at the bars or having a couple cigarettes on the weekends can cause shortness of breath and lead to being more susceptible to other illnesses, said Joanne Brown, a UK nurse practitioner  Even smoking one cigarette can lead to a possible long-term addiction.

“College students don’t see themselves as smokers,” Brown said. “If I ask someone if they smoke, they’ll say, ‘No not really. I just smoke on the weekends, when I go out to the bars with my friends or do hookah once in a while.’ They don’t realize that even just occasional smoking affects their health.”

Continuing to smoke into later life can lead to lung cancer and other diseases that are life-threatening. All these problems can occur from a natural plant grown in the same Kentucky dirt that UK students, staff and faculty walk over every day.

Snell says tobacco is still a profitable crop for farmers in this state. Hahn says the health effects are too much to overcome. But on Nov. 19 the main public university in the state of Kentucky will turn an eye toward combating the health effects of tobacco and attempt to make a better, healthier commonwealth in the minds of its administrators.

“I always say it’s a good business decision, but the reason the Board of Trustees did it was for health reasons to create a healthy environment,” Hahn said

While the debate will continue, UK hopes the use of tobacco on its campus and its state will decline. For some, tobacco is a health issue.  For others, it’s a financial issue. Many are torn between the two.

The debate may never be snuffed out, but neither will the people. Even if tobacco fades away, there will always be a farmer looking to make a living.

“If they ban tobacco, we’re Shell’s, we’ll bounce back,” Giles said. “We always do.”