Smoking is becoming more prevalent in the young adult population. About 28.5% of all college students smoke (Rigotti et al, 2000). Their reasons for using tobacco involve stimulation, handling, pleasurable relaxation, tension reduction, psychological addiction, and habit. The Reasons for Smoking Scale consists of 18 questions, each linked to one of the six subscales listed above. The purpose of this study was to assess demographic differences [gender, college major (health-related/not health-related), smoking status (social smoker/regular smoker), and year in college] on the scale for the college smoking population enrolled in a required fitness and wellness course. Respondents that identified themselves as smokers or social smokers (110 of 510, 21.6%) completed the Reasons for Smoking Scale as part of a larger study. Participants recorded responses of never (1), seldom (2), sometimes (3), often (4) or always (5) for each of the questions. Internal consistency was investigated using Cronbach's alpha coefficients. Data was reported as mean±standard deviation. Using SPSS 14.0, independent t-tests and Analysis of Variances were conducted to reveal demographic differences on the six factor means with a significance level at 0.05. After dropping items, the Cronbach's alpha reliability was greater than 0.8 for five of the six items. The handling scale was below the desired level, alpha;=0.615. There were no differences observed on any of the scales based on college major or year in school. Like previous research on college populations (Klitzke et al, 1990), this study found the highest scores on the tension reduction (2.9±1.2) and pleasurable relaxation (2.8±1.0) scales. A significant difference was observed between men (2.6±1.2) and women (3.2±1.2) on the tension reduction scale, p<0.05. The most notable differences on the scales was between social smokers and those who smoke regularly (smokers). Significant differences were found on five of the six scales: stimulation (social smokers 1.6±0.8, smokers 2.5±0.9), handling (social smokers 2.0±0.8, smokers 2.3±0.8), pleasurable relaxation (social smokers 2.5±1.0, smokers 3.3±0.8), tension reduction (social smokers 2.4±1.2, smokers 3.6±0.9), and psychological addiction (social smokers 1.5±0.8, smokers 3.1±1.2), p<0.05. Interestingly, no significant difference was found between social smokers and smokers on the habit scale, p>0.05. This research provides some insight into why college students smoke that may lead to more effective prevention and cessation strategies.Keyword(s): disease prevention/wellness, health education college/univ, measurement/evaluation