On Nov. 20, outside the Memorial Union, a small table with stacks of quit-vaping kits and a hand-lettered sign did the quiet work of the Great American Smokeout: meeting students where they were, answering hard questions without judgment and offering a first, practical step toward quitting nicotine.
“It’s the fourth year we’ve run it,” Megan Hamilton Giebest, from the Rhode Island Department of Health, said. “It’s to provide information and education about the resources students have toward vaping and wanting to quit nicotine.”
The pitch was simple: stop, ask anything, leave with tools and a plan. Staff from Health Services pointed students to free counseling and nicotine patches, explaining how pairing behavioral support with replacement therapy can blunt cravings in the first week — the stretch they said derails many quit attempts.
URI offers nicotine recovery therapy and nicotine patches for free through Health Services, according to Christine Hultquist, a health unit clerk from the URI Health Promotions Department.
Staff framed quitting as a skill, something to practice rather than being a single act of willpower, according to Giebest. The event staff named the common tripwires: anxiety, restlessness and social settings where vaping feels less like a habit and more like a ritual. Their advice emphasized structure over shame, such as setting a quit date, telling a friend, expecting discomfort and stacking supports like patches, check-ins and brief coping strategies to get through the first seven days.
Students stopping by between classes reflected the campus mix of curiosity and skepticism. First-year cell and molecular biology major Piper Doyle said they had seen friends try to quit only to slide back when stress spiked or when weekend plans turned into group vaping.
“I did not know that tobacco was a leading cause of death in Rhode Island,” Doyle said.
Even so, they said the event reframed what quitting could look like — less a cliff and more a path with rails.
“Events like this make it less intimidating,” Doyle said. “You see the table, you ask a question, you get something concrete to try.”
The kits paired QR codes for campus programs with simple tools like guidance for tips for managing triggers and short-term aids students could use immediately. Staff also stressed the broader health arc for young adults — that preventing progression from vaping to combustible tobacco and protecting developing brains are real and measurable wins that start with the next decision, not a perfect one.
Between leaf blowers, footsteps and passing conversations, students stepped up, listened for two minutes and left with a plan.
Organizers said they measure success in those small exchanges; a sign-up completed, a kit pocketed, a student who now knows whom to text when the first evening urge hits.
Giebest said the Great American Smokeout works best as a starting line, a public nudge that normalizes quitting and connects it to real support.
As the afternoon progressed, the table still drew a steady trickle of questions. Staff repeated the same refrain: quitting is possible, help is here and the first week is the work. The rest is practice — and support — one decision at a time.
