The government of Saskatchewan has reaffirmed its commitment to reducing tobacco use in the province along with helping those trying to quit. The pledge comes during National Non-Smoking Week. “National Non-Smoking Week provides an opportunity to recognize tobacco reduction efforts undertaken by the Ministry of Health and provincial tobacco reduction stakeholders,” stated Health Minister Don McMorris. “We have introduced important legislation to reduce smoking and the harmful effects of environmental tobacco smoke, and we continue to support cessation.”

One piece of legislation makes it illegal to smoke in a vehicle with children under the age of 16. Smoking is also banned on school grounds in the province.

The government also added two smoking cessation prescription drugs – Champix and Zyban – to the provincial drug plan last year.

An estimated 720 people in Saskatchewan die each year from lung diseases caused by smoking.

Read it on Global News: Government looking to reduce tobacco use in province

The members of the Delaware Valley High School Teens Against Tobacco Use (T.A.T.U.) club encouraged smokers at the high school to use the Great American Smokeout to make a plan to quit. Smoking is one of the leading causes of throat, mouth and lung cancer and the use of tobacco products, including dip, causes 5.4 million death per year. Some of the T.A.T.U. students created a visual representation in the hallway of how the mouth and lungs of a smoker might look.

Students walked through a huge yellow, disease ridden set of teeth and entered a hallway of blackened lungs, an ugly uvula and pictures of diseased lungs, mouth and teeth due to tobacco use.
On the floor there were pictures of healthy lungs and a sign that said “step on these healthy lungs to blacken them the way tobacco does”. In the background was a CD playing “coughing” sounds and anti-tobacco songs. “Ciggy” walked around handing out pamphlets about the positive changes the body makes when a person quits smoking.

The U.S. Naval Hospital Okinawa’s Health Promotion Department, in conjunction with the Occupational Health Clinic, provides a tobacco cessation program to assist service members and their families with their battle against nicotine addiction. The program provides classes every Tuesday morning at the hospital for those who are interested in decreasing their tobacco intake or would like to quit, said Joanne Haynes, a health promotions specialist with the hospital.

The program is important because tobacco use is the number one preventable cause of premature deaths among Americans, said Haynes.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, about 45.3 million people currently smoke cigarettes, and approximately 443,000 deaths occur annually due to cigarette smoking.

“This is where the tobacco cessation program comes in,” said Shirley Beasley-Posey, a wellness educator with Marine Corps Community Services’ health promotion office. “The program aims to provide the service member with information and a plan on how to become, and remain, successfully tobacco free.”

Individuals may use tobacco products as social habits or coping mechanisms to deal with certain stressors or problematic situations in life.

“Nicotine is an extremely addictive substance, making addiction the number one reason why people smoke,” said Beasley-Posey. “Smoking can also be a social habit. When others around you are smoking, you may feel like you should be doing the same. This feeling is known as peer pressure. Most people have a natural tendency to conform, which is an additional reason why people may decide to begin smoking.”

Tobacco use affects service members’ performance because it decreases stamina, conditioning, motor controls, lung capacity and night vision. Tobacco users are also at an increased risk for injuries and slower healing times, which can affect personal and unit readiness.

The tobacco cessation class offers the user information about the harmful effects of tobacco use and methods available to break the addiction. The class works with behavior modification and assists individuals in obtaining any needed medications, patches or gum that they may need to help break their habit.

“This program can benefit service members because we make it easy and convenient by offering walk-in appointments,” said Haynes. “We assist them in every aspect of breaking the addiction.
This program also assists members with the depression and irritability that nicotine withdrawal can often times bring on.”

The program is available as a class or in individual sessions; however, preregistration is recommended for those looking to attend the class.

“We are very flexible in where we offer our classes,” said Beasley-Posey. “We can travel to them, or they are free to come to our location on Camp Foster. We have even held classes in the barracks.”

The third Thursday in November has been designated as The Great American Smokeout Day by the American Cancer Society to encourage users to at least quit for a day, said Haynes. There will be an event held on Camp Lester for the Great American Smokeout for all status of forces agreement personnel Nov. 18.

For more information on tobacco cessation or the Great American Smokeout event, contact U.S. Naval Hospital Okinawa’s Health Promotion Department at 643-7906 or walk into any Occupational Health Clinic.

Smokers have been increasingly ostracized. Now the Palm Beach County School District is banishing them entirely, and not just from schools. No smoking will be allowed anywhere on any school property. Previously, adults were allowed to smoke outdoors if they stayed at least 50 feet away from a building entrance. “We’re hoping some employees will find it more difficult to smoke and really buckle down on quitting,” a district administrator told The Post.

Students caught smoking will be lectured about the dangers of tobacco use and given lessons in how to quit. Three-time violators, or those refusing the cessation lessons, can be suspended.

The policy, which starts Jan. 1, 2012, even forbids “electronic cigarettes” that deliver nicotine via heated water vapor. It also bans tobacco use in rented or leased facilities, at all school-sponsored events, and applies during school, after school and even on school property during summer vacations.

Many employers who ban smoking in the workplace still provide designated smoking areas for workers hooked on nicotine. Hey, addicts need their fix. The school district, however, will show smokers no such sympathy.

What do you think? Is the district right to ban all smoking on all school property? Click on the link below to take our poll.

When Ritney Castine was 10 years old, the Boys and Girls Club he attended in Napoleonville gave him an early education on smoking. “The issue of how the tobacco industry seeks to manipulate and target young people with their advertising, with their product lineup, all of that stuff really interested me,” Castine said.

Fourteen years later, Castine remains just as interested — and even more involved — in the subject.

The Southern University political science major and a Department of Health and Hospitals employee is one of 15 college students nationally selected for a Youth Activism Fellowship sponsored by Legacy, an anti-tobacco organization. For Castine, the fellowship continues a personal effort to discourage underage smoking that has never stopped.

Since being a part of the Boys and Girls Club’s Teens Against Tobacco Use, anti-smoking has been Castine’s passion. TATU lobbied Napoleonville’s Town Council, the Assumption Parish Police Jury and the State Legislature on smoking issues. As a teen, he co-founded an organization in Assumption Parish called Peers Against Tobacco that worked with other organizations to lobby governmental entities to curb tobacco use in public places. At 16, Castine was named South Regional Youth Advocate of the Year by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

The death of an uncle, a smoker, to lung cancer was one of the family issues that shaped Castine’s thinking.

“My passion really found itself in knowing that folks in my own family have struggled with addiction to tobacco use,” he said. “My grandmother, even with me flying across the country and winning national and state awards still to this day struggles with tobacco use, not because it’s something she wants to do but because it’s something she is addicted to because she started smoking at the age of 13.”

Castine has been part of efforts that worked directly with teens and lobbied public officials. DHH’s Louisiana Tobacco Control Program and Campaign for Tobacco-Free Living annually co-sponsor statewide youth summits that bring in speakers to give attendees ways to make a difference in their communities.

Before the passage of the Louisiana Smoke-Free Air Act, which in 2007 banned smoking in most public places, smoking opponents chipped away at the problem city by city, creating local ordinances that were stronger than the existing state laws.

Laws, however, aren’t the only battleground, Castine said.

“The only way to combat this is empowering the young people to make a difference, knowing that the youth are more apt to listen to their peers than to adults,” he said.

The Legacy fellowship that Castine received included a recent conference in San Jose, Calif., at which participants formed committees to encourage the adoption of smoke-free policies at historically black colleges and universities and to encourage predominantly black churches and denominations to offer stop-smoking counseling.

He also attended a conference on menthol, a flavor additive that black smokers favor in much greater percentages than smokers of other races, Castine said. Federal laws ban adding of flavors to cigarettes but exempt menthol, Castine said, because of support by the Congressional Black Caucus. Cigarette companies marketed menthol cigarettes to the black community in part by sponsoring events that were important to African Americans, he said.

“I think that they view the tobacco industry not as a threat to African Americans but as a consistent ally because they were sponsoring those events,” Castine said.

Although Castine’s activism is as a volunteer, his work with DHH as youth and community programs coordinator also targets smoking issues. His office oversees grants that promote the 1-800-QUIT-NOW cessation helpline and helps plan the annual youth summit on tobacco issues.

“I know that 85 to 90 percent of current tobacco users start smoking before the age of 18,” Castine said. “I know that if I have the opportunity to educate and empower young people to resist the use of tobacco as a young person, then they won’t use.”

The South Dakota Tobacco Control Program has awarded $146,495 in grant money to eight community/school partnerships statewide. The communities include Brandon, Canton, Dell Rapids, Custer, Fall River Counties, Mitchell, Spearfish, Sioux Falls and Watertown. The partnerships will use the funding to support tobacco control activities specific to the needs of the communities.

The grant money is funded by the ballot measure passed in 2006 that increased the tax on tobacco products and allocated money to the Department of Health for tobacco prevention and control.

A higher rate of tobacco usage than the average in the state of Georgia has prompted researchers to target Polk County for a health project aimed at collecting data and educating the public. Dr. Jerry Jennings, a psychology professor at Berry College, is leading the study, which received funding through the Center for Disease Control and the Northwest Georgia Department of Public Health.

The project began this Fall and will last for two years in Polk County. Currently, the project is gathering data about smoking or smokeless tobacco use in the county.

Jennings is seeking a random sample of Polk County residents by asking them to fill out a tobacco questionnaire. He has already setup in front of both Wal-Marts in the county with the survey, which he said only takes a couple of minutes to fill out.

A second way of gathering data is to conduct interviews with key persons in the community, Jennings said. He defined key persons as health officials and the coroner.

Jennings will also conduct focus groups with people that use tobacco and those that do not. Focus groups have already been conducted with employees of Nordic Cold Storage and employees of Polk County, while Jennings will also set up a group at Polk Medical Center.

Once the data gathering phase is complete, the study will move toward an intervention phase, “in order to try and change the tobacco use in Polk County,” Jennings said.

Attempts at intervention will come from speaking with students in fifth through eighth grades, as well as working with high school students.

Jennings said some data indicated the average age for children to begin using tobacco products in Polk County is 11. He said the information came from a health risk survey given in schools every three years.

The intervention program will also target the work force by working with major employers and offering literature on tobacco use as well as offering to assist with smoke cessation classes.

The Polk Tobacco Challenge could win a local business or industry a $500 cash prize by having the most employees participate in a cessation class or if the business signs a pledge to become tobacco free.

Businesses will receive points in a variety of ways, including, placing signage related to the Georiga Quit Line or if the campus of the business is designated as smoke-free.

The project will also lobby to make more areas of Polk County smoke-free. By working with the City of Cedartown, Jennings hopes to discuss with the Parks and Recreation department to make those facilities tobacco-free.

Jennings said this is his third year on the project, but the first in Polk County. The project was previously based out of Chattooga County, which has the highest tobacco use rate in the state of Georgia, Jennings said.

He provided a study by the Georgia Department of Public Health done to access information on tobacco related illnesses, deaths, and use in Chattooga and Polk Counties compared to aggregate data from all counties in Georgia.

“In all categories, the health statistics demonstrate that tobacco use is contributing to major health problems in Chattooga and Polk Counties when compared to state of Georgia aggregate statistics. Clearly, addressing tobacco use in an intervention program should reap improved health benefits for residents of the Counties,” the study concluded.

The Bay Area Council On Drugs and Alcohol was awarded the Tobacco Environmental Coalition grant from the Department of State and Health Services. The TEC prevents and reduces the illegal and harmful use of tobacco products in communities across Texas by promoting and conducting community-based environmental prevention strategies that have an impact on the social, cultural, political and economic processes of the community.

Coalitions broaden support for community projects and increase credibility, provide volunteers for activities, and maximize the power of participating groups through joint action. Coalitions are especially important when engaging in broad community actions to change public policy.

The coalition will conduct evidence-based strategies and evaluate activities in League City that address two major goals: Eliminate exposure to secondhand smoke; and reduce tobacco use among populations with the highest burden of tobacco-related health disparities.

The University of Oregon announced plans Wednesday to ban smoking and all tobacco on campus by 2012. UO is the first school in the Pac-10 Conference to announce such an endeavor. However, students and faculty won’t be expected to go cold turkey, as the University will offer help to those who need it during the transition.

Wednesday’s announcement comes on the heels of a new report that shows Oregon ranks 25th in the nation in funding smoking cessation and prevention programs. According to the study, Oregon spends just over $7 million, well short of the $43 million recommended by the Center for Disease Control.