Nearly 50 people signed adoption papers Thursday urging someone to quit smoking for 24 hours, said a spokesperson for the Student Wellness Resource Center.

“I took cigarettes right out of eight people’s mouths and smashed them,” said Azar Shahkarami, a senior community health major who coordinated the Great American Smokeout at NIU as part of an internship project.

After the adoption papers were signed, workers placed the names in raffle boxes, and the winners received T-shirts from the American Cancer Association.

Shahkarami was surprised by the turnout of people who participated. “I can say I didn’t know that many people would stop by. I could tell 85 percent of the people weren’t smokers,” she said.

In fact, fewer college-age people all over the U.S. are smoking, according to Joanna Deuth, an educator with the Health Enhancement Staff.

“We find, generally, college students don’t smoke as often as non-college students of the same age range, so we don’t need to do as much with smoking as we do with other high risk problems,” she said.

“There’s more awareness about the effects of smoking,” said Leslie Breyer, a senior nursing major, who saw firsthand the effects smoking can cause when she treated a patient suffering from emphysema over the summer who could barely move or breathe. “All she could do is lay there,” she said.

Student Wellness Awareness Team members feel it’s a benefit to society that many businesses and workplaces are banning smoking from their premises. “Secondhand smoke is just as harmful as smoking,” said Rachel Vellenga, a junior english major.

This was the first year the Health Enhancement Services sponsored a smokeout at NIU. “Fraternities have sponsored them in the past, but this was the first year we became involved,” Shahkarami said.

ealth Enhancement will probably hold a similar event next year, members said.

According to the American Cancer Society 390,000 people die every year from smoking and smoking-related diseases.