Going back to university for your second or third year feels very different from arriving for the first time.
First year is often about independence. For many students, it is the first time living away from parents, managing their own timetable and deciding for themselves how they spend their evenings and weekends. New friendship groups form quickly, nights out become part of university life and habits can develop almost without anyone consciously deciding to adopt them and for some students, one of those habits is smoking or vaping.
Perhaps cigarettes started as something you only did outside the pub with friends. Maybe you bought a vape for nights out and gradually found yourself reaching for it throughout the day. By the end of first year, something that began as occasional social behaviour can have become part of everyday life.
Returning for a new academic year provides a useful opportunity to reassess those habits. And if you've decided that smoking or vaping isn't something you want to take with you into the rest of university, there are several ways to approach quitting.
Importantly, nicotine pouches are only one possible option. Giving up smoking successfully is usually about finding the combination of practical strategies, support and, where necessary, nicotine or stop-smoking treatments that works for you.
Don't Wait for the "Perfect" Time to Quit
It is tempting to postpone quitting and you promise yourself that you'll stop after Freshers' Week, after Christmas, after your exams, when you graduate, when you get your first proper job or when you settle down.
Unfortunately, habits have a tendency to become more established rather than disappearing by themselves and if smoking or vaping is something you've picked up relatively recently, there is a good argument for tackling it now rather than allowing another few years of routines and associations to build around it.
That doesn't mean somebody who has smoked for decades cannot quit, people successfully stop after many years, but there is little benefit in deliberately allowing a new habit to become a long-term one.
With a different timetable, different accommodation, new modules and perhaps new housemates, starting a new university year provides a natural break in your routine. Rather than automatically recreating all your first-year habits, you can decide which ones you actually want to bring back.
Start by Understanding Why You Smoke or Vape
Before choosing a method for quitting, work out what you're actually trying to replace. Nicotine dependence is part of the equation, but smoking is also behavioural.
The NHS identifies routine, emotional and situational triggers for smoking. These can include drinking coffee, finishing a meal, taking a break, feeling stressed or bored, drinking alcohol, socialising with smokers and simply seeing somebody else smoke and University life can contain plenty of these triggers.
If you only smoke after three pints at the student union, your strategy may be different from someone who wakes up and immediately reaches for a vape. If cigarettes have become your excuse to take a revision break, you need another way of taking that break. If you vape whenever you're stressed about an assignment, dealing with the stress itself needs to form part of the solution.
For a week, pay attention to when you smoke or vape and ask yourself three questions:
- Where am I?
- Who am I with?
- What made me want nicotine at that moment?
Patterns usually start appearing and once you understand them, you can start breaking them.
Set a Quit Date
"At some point this term" isn't much of a plan, so it is advisable to choose a date.
It could be the beginning of your second week back, the Monday after Freshers' Week or another point when your timetable has settled down. Give yourself enough time to prepare, but don't keep pushing the date further into the future.
Then, before it arrives, remove cigarettes, disposable vapes, lighters and other reminders from your room, bag and coat pockets and decide what you're going to do when the first serious craving arrives.
The NHS says cravings tend to be particularly difficult during the first 28 days, while individual cravings are temporary and generally pass relatively quickly. That's useful to remember at university as you don't necessarily need to imagine never smoking again while you're halfway through a difficult afternoon in the library, sometimes you just need to get through the next craving.
Don't Assume You Have to Do It on Willpower Alone
There can be a strange feeling that quitting only "counts" if you stop overnight and never touch nicotine again but that isn't how UK stop-smoking guidance approaches the problem.
NICE recommends that adults who smoke should have access to behavioural support alongside a range of treatments, including short- and long-acting nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) and prescription medicines. NICE also recognises nicotine-containing e-cigarettes as a stop-smoking intervention for people who smoke.
Traditional NRT includes:
- nicotine patches
- gum
- lozenges
- inhalators
- mouth sprays
- nasal sprays.
A particularly useful approach can be combining a long-acting product such as a patch with a short-acting form of NRT for sudden cravings. NICE identifies combined short- and long-acting NRT, when accompanied by behavioural support, among the interventions more likely to result in successful smoking cessation.
A pharmacist, GP or Stop Smoking Service can help you choose an appropriate option rather than simply guessing.
Where Do Nicotine Pouches Fit In?
For an adult who currently smokes, the most important distinction is between nicotine and smoke.
Cigarettes deliver nicotine through burning tobacco and that combustion produces smoke containing numerous harmful substances. Nicotine pouches don't involve tobacco combustion and don't require anything to be inhaled into the lungs which makes them fundamentally different from cigarettes.
For somebody whose immediate goal is to stop inhaling nicotine, pouches can also have practical advantages as there's no smoke, vapour or aerosol, and using a pouch doesn't require repeatedly leaving whatever you're doing for a cigarette or vaping break.
At university that can make them particularly convenient during a lectures, tutorials or a long session in the library (subject of course to the rules of the university or individual venue). The same principle applies in many other places where smoking or vaping isn't permitted, such as cinemas, concerts and many indoor social venues.
However, there is an important distinction to make as Nicotine pouches are not currently an NHS-approved nicotine replacement therapy.
Despite them having the same active ingredients and virtually the same way of using them as nicotine gum, the NHS says there is not yet enough independent evidence about their short- and long-term safety or their effectiveness for smoking cessation, and currently recommends established medicines, licensed NRT or, for smokers, vaping ahead of nicotine pouches as quitting aids.
So while we can't say that buying a tin of pouches is equivalent to undertaking an established NRT programme, a smoker who chooses pouches instead of cigarettes is removing combustion and smoke from the equation. somebody who ultimately wants to become nicotine-free still needs an exit strategy from the nicotine itself and there, the range of 0% nicotine pouches, often in the same flavours as your regular nicotine pouch, can certainly help as you. They are ideal for keeping the routine of using a pouch or other regular nicotine intake, while removing the chemical addiction that is causing the most harm.
What If You're Trying to Quit Vaping?
If you are trying to quit vaping, it requires a slightly different approach. For a cigarette smoker, switching completely to vaping can substantially reduce exposure to the harmful products of combustion.
The NHS describes vaping as much less harmful than smoking and recognises it as one method that can help smokers quit but if you're already vaping and your objective is to stop vaping, switching between different vapes isn't necessarily addressing your goal.
One problem with vaping is that consumption can become difficult to notice. A cigarette has an obvious beginning and end. A vape can sit beside your laptop while you study and be picked up repeatedly throughout an evening.
Try introducing boundaries first: don't vape at your desk, don't carry it around your accommodation, don't use it while walking between lectures and don't keep it beside your bed, then you can then work towards reducing nicotine intake or stopping completely.
If dependence is making that difficult, speak to a pharmacist, GP or stop-smoking adviser about suitable support rather than trying to improvise a treatment programme yourself.
Alcohol Is One of the Biggest Tests
For many students, the temptation of alcohol, particularly at the weekend is where a successful Monday-to-Friday quitting attempt falls apart.
You haven't smoked all week then Friday arrives, you're outside a pub with six friends who smoke, somebody offers you one and suddenly your plan seems considerably less important. There's nothing that makes you think "why not, it won't be so bad" as a couple of drinks inside you.
The NHS specifically identifies alcohol and socialising with smokers as common smoking triggers and advises that reducing alcohol, particularly during the first few weeks of quitting, can make cravings easier to manage.
You don't necessarily have to abandon your social life but you may need to change it temporarily and drink less for the first few weeks. Be mindful enough that you don't automatically follow everyone outside when they smoke and let your friends know you're quitting so they know not to offer you cigarettes.
If one particular night or venue always results in you smoking, consider giving it a miss while the new habit establishes itself and while being the only person who stays inside can feel strange the first time, by the tenth time, it's the new habit and is simply what you do.
Replace the Cigarette Break, Not Just the Cigarette
One underrated aspect of smoking is that it gives people permission to stop what they're doing so after 50 minutes revising, you can go outside, walk around, talk to somebody.
While you can say "I'm just going out for a cigarette", "I'm going to stand outside doing nothing for 5 minutes" is somehow more socially unacceptable
But it shouldn't be; the cigarette is the unnecessary part not the break so keep the break and change the activity.
Walk around campus, buy a coffee, send somebody a message, do ten minutes of something completely unrelated to your course and if you're revising at home, get out of your room for a few minutes.
The same applies to stress and although smoking can become associated with the feeling of relief because you're stepping away from whatever was stressing you, find another ritual that creates that separation without requiring a cigarette.
Use the Support Available to You
Being away from your family doesn't mean you're required to do everything alone and you should tell your friends what you're doing. A housemate can become your quit buddy, your friends who smoke can help by not offering you cigarettes and if several people in your group want to stop, doing it together can make the social side considerably easier.
Professional help is available too and NHS Stop Smoking Services provide specialist advice and can discuss treatments including NRT and prescription stop-smoking medicines while NICE recommends behavioural support alongside stop-smoking treatments because dealing with the habits surrounding smoking is an important part of becoming smoke-free.
Your university may also provide wellbeing or health services that can point you towards local support because although you might be living independently now, that doesn't mean independence requires refusing help.
Think About the Money
University isn't generally a period of life associated with having excessive disposable income so calculate what smoking or vaping is actually costing you.
Don't estimate, look at your bank transactions and add it up, make the saving visible and work out what else you can do with the money. Move the amount you would normally have spent into a separate account each week. After a month, you could use some of it for something you actually want or even, after a term, look at how much has accumulated.
"Saving money" is abstract but seeing £100, £200 or more sitting in an account because you didn't spend it on cigarettes or vapes is much more tangible.
Smoking just 2 packs of cigarettes a week will cost you just over £30, which works out at more than £120 a month and by the end of the year in June (about 40 weeks away), you could have over £1,200 saved in that account. That's a decent holiday or a pretty good new laptop and all for the penalty of being able to breathe easier and not trailing a smell of stale smoke wherever you go!
Don't Turn One Cigarette Into a Failed Quit Attempt
If you've managed three smoke-free weeks and then have a cigarette on a night out there are two possible responses:
- The first is: "I've failed, so I might as well buy a packet."
- The second is: "What caused that, and what am I going to do differently next time?"
Only one of those responses turns one cigarette into twenty and the NHS explicitly advises treating relapse as something to learn from: identify the trigger, work out what helped previously and adjust the plan before trying again.
Quitting doesn't become worthless because it wasn't perfect. If alcohol triggered the cigarette, address alcohol next time. If you ran out of NRT, make sure you've got enough. If exam stress caused it, build another coping mechanism into your revision plan.
Learn, adjust and continue, rather than defaulting back to what used to define you.
Make Second Year Different from First Year
University is supposed to change you and as you move into your second year you know the campus now, you've worked out how lectures and seminars operate and you've probably become better at managing money, cooking, studying and living with other people, even if there's still someone in your house who apparently believes washing-up happens through natural decomposition.
Your habits can mature as well and if you picked up smoking during first year, you don't have to carry it through second year simply because that's now what your friendship group expects. If your occasional vape has turned into something permanently attached to your hand, you can decide you don't want that to continue, there isn't one correct route.
For some people, stopping completely works. Others benefit from licensed NRT. Some smokers use vaping as an intermediate step away from cigarettes. Prescription treatments and professional behavioural support are available. And some adult nicotine users may choose a non-inhaled product such as nicotine pouches as part of moving away from smoking or vaping, while recognising that pouches remain addictive and are not currently an approved smoking-cessation treatment.
The eventual objective can be bigger than simply changing the way you consume nicotine, it can be not needing it at all, and the beginning of a new academic year is as good a moment as any to start working towards that.
You left plenty of things behind when first year finished, why not make smoking or vaping one of them?
