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Hospitals across southwest Florida are banning smoking completely. It's impacting more than just employees, like Adrienne Jones. She used to smoke a pack a day.
"Our lunch hour, smoke as many as you can instead of eating," admits Jones.
That attitude stopped a year ago when her 42-year old husband, also a smoker, suffered a heart attack.
"It was sudden," said Jones. "We didn't expect it, we didn't know he had a bad heart."
Health concerns are the main reason her employer, Lee Memorial Health System, is installing a tobacco ban on all their properties starting November 19.
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In conjunction with The Great American Smoke Out, an annual event aimed at helping people quit smoking, Westfield Memorial Hospital will become a tobacco-free campus today. According to a press release from the hospital, the new policy will prohibit the use of any type of tobacco product such as cigarettes, cigars, pipes and chewing tobacco anywhere on the hospital's grounds, and the policy will affect all employees, physicians, visitors, patients, volunteers, vendors and other medical staff.
"As a healthcare provider, we were going to do it for a year, but we had so many changes with the Berger Commission that we didn't want to do it until now," said Tina Newell, a community educator at Westfield Memorial Hospital.
New York City has one of the lowest smoking rates in the country - just 16% - after years of aggressive ad campaigns and strict smoking laws, including the city's groundbreaking smoking ban at bars and restaurants.
A new ad campaign launched this year shows a disgusting blackened lung caused by years of smoking. Previous anti-smoking ads showed a Bronx woman with 20 amputations she said resulted from smoking.
But about 1.3 million New Yorkers still smoke, the Health Department says, and getting the holdouts to kick the habit might be the hardest part.
“BUTT OUT! Ending Tobacco Industry Exploitation of the LGBT Community” will mark the Gay American Smokeout by staging a public spectacle to draw attention to the impact of Big Tobacco on the LGBT community, on Nov. 19 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at Harvey Milk Plaza. BUTT OUT!, a local LGBT advocacy group that works against the tobacco companies, and dozens of local concerned citizens dressed in black and wearing skull makeup to represent those who have died from tobacco, will chase out of the Castro the tobacco company’s proxy, the Grim Reaper, standing close to 10-feet tall while wielding a three-foot cigarette. State Senator Mark Leno, who has pledged to refuse campaign donations from tobacco companies, will be speaking at the event.
Although a majority of smokers want to quit smoking, many delay making a plan to quit until the last minute, according to a recent American Cancer Society online survey of people who say they want to. Twenty-two percent of smokers surveyed planned to quit within 24 hours, while 30 percent said they planned to quit within a week or two. The American Cancer Society stresses the importance of planning ahead to quit smoking as research shows that preparing for quitting by allowing enough time to get nicotine replacement therapy, and planning how to deal with cravings and tempting situations, greatly increases the likelihood of succeeding. The Society encourages smokers to use the annual occasion of the Great American Smokeout® on November 19 as a date to make a plan to quit, or to plan in advance and quit smoking that day.
The survey, conducted via the Great American Smokeout Web site (www.cancer.org/GreatAmericans) also found that 76 percent of smokers surveyed did not know that they could receive free help
American Cancer Society South Dakota Government Relations Director Jennifer Stalley says, “It is appropriate that today, on the 34th annual American Cancer Society Great American Smoke Out—a day dedicated to helping smokers quit—the American Cancer Society, along with more than fifty diverse public health, business and medical groups, will begin in earnest our statewide effort to support the smoke free law on the November 2010 ballot and ensure that no one has to choose between their health and their job in our great state."
“We are confident that the vast majority of South Dakotans support this law and that by this time next year –the 35th annual Great American Smoke Out—South Dakota will be a smoke free state.”
Officials for the American Cancer Society in South Dakota say they won't appeal a court decision that will now send a smoking ban in South Dakota bars, restaurants, casinos and other businesses to the vote of the people in 2010.
The announcement by the Society's government relations director Jennifer Stally came on the 34th annaul American Cancer Society Great American Smoke Out Day. Stalley said in a news release that the Cancer Society "will begin in earnest our statewide effort to support the smoke free law on the November 2010 ballot and ensure that no one has to choose between their health and their job in our great state."
Syracuse, NY -- It appears as if Onondaga County's ban on smoking within 100 feet of hospital property is working at Crouse and Upstate University hospitals, which implemented it this morning.
There are bright yellow signs announcing the ordinance on the sides of the buildings and on fences. While cigarette butts line the sidewalks of those hospitals like the aftermath of long-gone parties, there were no smokers to be found near the hospitals this morning.
A drive around the hospitals at 8:15 a.m. uncovered no smokers. A block away, seven smokers were found an hour later in a private parking lot behind Varsity Pizza on Crouse Avenue. The lot is surrounded by buildings and not visible from the street.
Four Syracuse hospitals are using today's Great American Smokeout to kick off their enforcement of a new Onondaga County law that forbids smoking within 100 feet of a health care facility.
The law, which went to effect Nov. 1, affects Upstate University, St. Joseph's. Crouse and Community General hospitals. Smoking is prohibited on any sidewalks, streets and parking facilities within 100 feet of those facilities as long as a sign is posted that warns of the ban. Those caught breaking the law could be fined $50.
The hospitals, which lobbied the County Legislature to pass the law, delayed enforcing it until the annual Great American Smokeout to
Tobacco-Free Living of Louisiana is teaming up with local musicians and businesses in downtown Alexandria to throw a block party as part of the Great American Smoke Out 2009 to help clear the air about secondhand smoke.
Region VI Tobacco Prevention and Cancer Control Coalition, Rapides Parish Healthy Initiatives Coalition and Louisiana Youth Prevention Services will partner to host "Live on Air" 6-10 p.m. Thursday on Desoto Street between Third and Fourth streets in downtown Alexandria to raise awareness -- and to have some fun while they're at it.
Tipitina's Music Co-op has partnered with the event to provide music by local artists -- including DC Sills, Dick Larry & Mick, Bombs Away, Gutta Boy Muzik and Dynamic Jake -- that will cover a wide range of musical tastes.
The American Cancer Society asks smokers to give up the habit for one day today as part of the Great American Smokeout.
A $2 million federal grant could help St. Joseph fight an anti-smoking battle of its own with longer lasting results.
The City Council gave the City of St. Joseph Health Department the green light Monday to apply for the Communities Putting Prevention to Work grant — part of the American Reinvestment & Recovery Act of 2009. If the funding is approved, the health department will work with Heartland Health, the Missouri Department of Health & Senior Services, Buchanan County, the St. Joseph School District, Missouri Western State University, the St. Joseph Youth Alliance and the University of Missouri to implement an anti-smoking marketing campaign, smoking cessation services and other programs.
City Health Director Debra Bradley provided statistics showing the severity of St. Joseph’s smoking problem among young people. According to a study from the health department and Heartland Health, 56 percent of local youths age 18 to 24 smoke, while roughly one in four adults are smokers.
Council member Mike Bozarth was the most vocal opponent of Monday’s resolution. As a smoker and opponent of expanded government regulations, Mr. Bozarth said he didn’t want the council to take part in a program that could restrict citizens’ personal choices.
About one in every five residents of Tennessee and Georgia still uses tobacco, studies show, and that's just too many, health advocate say.
Although there has been progress, smoking rates have gone up and down over the past few years in Tennessee, ranging from 27.7 percent in 2002 to 23.1 percent last year, according to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System surveys that states submit to federal health officials.
The Tennessee smoking rate "is not where it needs to be, and it's certainly not a downward trend, so that's what's sort of disappointing," said Dr. Vince Viscomi, a Chattanooga pulmonologist and president of the Chattanooga and Hamilton County Medical Society.
In Georgia, rates are slowing ticking downward . . .
Culturally, Tennesseans have made "incredible progress" in attitudes toward smoking, said Shelley Courington, executive director of the Campaign for a Healthy and Responsible Tennessee.
"Smoke-free has become the norm here, and who would have thought years ago that that would be possible in Tennessee, in a state where tobacco for years was the No. 1 cash crop?" she said.
Still, low funding has hindered progress, Ms. Courington said. . . .
TENNESSEE QUIT LINE
* 1-800-784-8669
GEORGIA QUIT LINE
* 1-877-270-STOP
Tennessee ranked 44th among states in overall health, but 45th in smoking and 47th in obesity, both of which cause costly preventable diseases, said "America's Health Rankings." . . .
Today's Great American Smokeout challenges people to quit smoking for just one day (with the expectation that more smoke-free days will follow). Local efforts will target both smokers and nonsmokers, said Tyler Peterson, chair of the University of Tennessee Colleges Against Cancer.
The organization's executive committee will be on the campus's pedestrian walkway today with an exhibit tagged "Aren't you sick of walking through smoke?" and marked with smoke machines and chalk outlines of bodies to represent cancer deaths, he said.
The group will have information on cancers and will give out candy to passers-by - Dum Dums for smokers, Smarties for nonsmokers.
But their serious message is "how to quit,"
State health officials say more than 33,000 calls have been received at a toll-free line created more than three years ago to help Tennesseans quit smoking.
The Tennessee Tobacco QuitLine, established in August 2006, is 1-800-QUIT-NOW.
The Department of Health is offering support to help Pennsylvania smokers give up tobacco for good during the 34th annual Great American Smokeout on Nov. 19.
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just reported cigarette smoking among adults increased for the first time in 15 years. Approximately 46 million adults still smoke and about two million are Pennsylvanians," said Health Secretary Everette James. "While quitting can be difficult, we are asking smokers to use the Smokeout on Nov. 19 as an opportunity to take the first step toward a healthier lifestyle."