News Team Boulder

Issue date: 4/24/08 Section: News

During the month of April, the third annual Quit And Win event is encouraging CU students to quit smoking. The event is working with STA Travel on campus, offering the incentive of prizes like a $500 gift certificate at STA for quitting.

Preston Garland, an intern with the Colorado Collegiate Tobacco Prevention Initiative who helped organize Quit And Win, said the idea is to get students to quit smoking for a month. "Then they can continue on and stay quit for the rest of their lives," he said.

Students who quit smoking quickly see changes in their bodies. Just two weeks after quitting, withdrawal symptoms decrease, and three months later, lung function increases by 30 percent.

Not only does quitting help clean up lungs, but it also creates a cleaner environment. Smokers throw out 4.5 trillion non-biodegradable cigarette butts each year. That's 8 million butts every minute. If all these butts were stacked end-to-end, they would reach the moon and back 150 times.

Quit And Win is working hard to help students put out those cigarettes for good.

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