Great American Smokeout is the time to quit smoking

Groups are urging smokers to quit on Nov. 19 during ‘Smokeout’ day

CHILHOWIE, Va. – John Johnson coughed, hacked and wheezed like a steam engine freight train that just could not make it up a hill.
He puffed and puffed, and with each puff seemingly came another round of body-wracking coughs.
“He had a deep, hacking cough,” said Kimberly Clark, administrator at Valley Health Care Center, a nursing home in Chilhowie, Va., where Johnson has resided since 2003, “and we’d just ache for him.”
That was a month ago.
Johnson, 64, smoked cigarettes.
That is until a bout with pneumonia spirited him to the hospital.
“I about died,” Johnson said. “I had to quit smoking. Wouldn’t that make you want to quit?”

GREAT AMERICAN SMOKEOUT
Come Nov. 19, the American Cancer Society hosts the Great American Smokeout. Staged each third Thursday of November, this year marks 34 years for the awareness-raising event.
“We do have a lot of people who say that the Great American Smokeout helped them to change,” said Karen Heaton, American Cancer Society health initiatives representative for Northeast Tennessee. “There was a time when smoking was considered cool. Now it’s not. Now it’s taboo.”
The cancer society hopes that with more acute awareness that smokers will seek more education and like Johnson will also quit smoking.
“It’s never too late to quit,” Heaton said.
American Cancer Society statistics provide proof. Smoking causes at least 30 percent of all cancer deaths and 87 percent of deaths as a result of lung cancer each year. An estimated 443,000 people also die prematurely from smoking, 49,400 of whom are nonsmokers from exposure to secondhand smoke.
However, people need not become one of those statistics.
“Within 20 minutes of smoking that last cigarette, your heart rate and blood pressure will drop,” Heaton said. “Within 12 hours, the carbon monoxide in your blood level returns to normal.”
And so on.
Just look at Johnson after only a month sans cigarettes. Literally look at him, Clark said.
“John had a gray, ashen color for years,” Clark said. “Now he looks so much better. It goes to show that if you stop smoking, you can reverse the effects.”
So on Nov. 19 in recognition of the Great American Smokeout, Clark said Valley Health Care Center plans to participate. The center will feature daylong activities aimed to help its residents, staff and their family members who smoke to quit.
“If you can quit for one day,” Clark said, “that can carry on to the next day.”
Bear in mind, Heaton and Clark said, that smokers are absolutely not the lone victims of cigarette smoke. Secondhand smoke can and has led to serious health problems and death.
“I had a young lady in her 20s who was not a smoker. Both of her parents were heavy smokers,” Clark said. “She was diagnosed with lung cancer. All the physicians and experts said it was a result of secondhand smoke. She died before she was 30.”

APPALACHIAN COLLEGE OF PHARMACY
Appalachian College of Pharmacy students Magaly Wong and Stephanie Nameth sat at a small table a few feet from the pharmacy at Rite Aid on Commonwealth Avenue in Bristol, Va., on Tuesday afternoon.
They are among four of associate professor Shamly Abdelfattah students from the Oakwood, Va., school participating in an assigned school project.
“We’re trying to help people stop smoking,” Abdelfattah said.
An eye-catching message emblazoned on a bright red sign fronted the table. It said: “Tired of paying for cigarettes? Free help is here.”
Stacks of two stapled sets of forms lay upon the table.
One outlined their project, and the other is a questionnaire.
“We’re raising awareness,” Nameth said. “It gets people to think about quitting.”
The students’ questionnaire includes questions relative to education and occupation levels, numbers of packs smoked per day, reasons for desiring to quit, preferred methods of aid in quitting and so on.
“We’ll take the data and look at what is the most effective way to get people to quit smoking, and what is the most preferred method,” Wong said. “Quitting improves their life and improves their health. You can save a lot of money.”
Cigarettes vary in price, but let’s say that a pack costs about $4.
“In our survey, most people who smoke, smoke between a half a pack to two packs per day,” Wong said.
At two packs per day at $4 per pack, costs amount to $2,920 per year. That could pay for an outstanding family vacation.
“You can live 10 years longer and save $100,000 in a lifetime if you quit smoking,” Abdelfattah said. “You have to drive the point home.”
Yet Nameth said that as time goes by and smoking becomes less socially acceptable, price may become less a factor.
“A generation from now, with all the efforts, I think people will be smoking less,” Nameth said. “Smoking is losing its appeal.”

VIRGINIA’S SMOKEOUT
Major changes are afoot in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Signed into law by Gov. Tim Kaine and effective Dec. 1, smoking in restaurants will henceforth come under clear restrictions.
Most apparent under the law, restaurants must now either eliminate smoking entirely within their building or provide an enclosed and ventilated smoking area for smokers that completely blockades smoke from the rest of the restaurant.
Some restaurants in Virginia went smoke free years ago. For example, Shoney’s on Lee Highway off exit 5 in Bristol, Va., long ago banned smoking, said manager Darin Blix.
“Since 2000,” Blix said. “At first we had some people who didn’t like it, but they realized they could just go outside and smoke. A lot of people enjoyed it; they didn’t have to sit in the smoke anymore.”
Tennessee banned smoking in restaurants via the Non Smoker Protection Act, which took effect Oct. 1, 2007. Some restaurants, such as Applebee’s on Volunteer Parkway in Bristol, Tenn., initially experienced a decline in business as a result of the law.
“We had a pretty good drop-off,” said J.B. Hill, manager at the Applebee’s Volunteer Parkway location. “Anybody who sold alcohol probably felt it. Plus with us, you could drive three miles [into Virginia] and smoke your cigarettes.”
Not as of Dec. 1.
“It’ll be a level field then,” Hill said.

JOHN JOHNSON
Meanwhile John Johnson seems to smile more nowadays.
The 40-year smoker recalled when he, too, smoked – in restaurants, his home, car, work, and whenever and wherever he could.
“I liked it a lot,” Johnson said. “I was smoking three to four packs a day.”
His brand?“Any kind,” he said.
Heavy smoker certainly described Johnson as he was.
“He lived to go out and smoke,” Clark said. “I mean, every minute of the day.”
The pneumonia that nearly killed Johnson actually saved him.
“When he came back from the hospital, he was prescribed breathing treatments, and he hated them,” Clark said. “He was told that if he didn’t smoke, then he didn’t have to take the breathing treatments.”
Johnson ditched his cigarettes. Now just a month and a pizza party celebration after he quit lighting up, the nearly lifelong smoker no longer huffs because he no longer puffs.
“You bet I feel better,” Johnson said. “Now I breathe real good. I feel wonderful now.”

YOU SHOULD KNOW: RESOURCES TO QUIT SMOKING

AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY
Info: (423) 975-0635 (Johnson City), (276) 739-7780 (Abingdon) or (800) 227-2345
Web: http://www.cancer.org/greatamericans

VALLEY HEALTH CARE CENTER
Info: (276) 646-8911

WEB HELP
http://www.smokefree.gov
http://www.nicotine-anonymous.org
http://www.helppregnantsmokers-quit.org
http://www.smartmomsoftennessee.com
http://www.way2quit.com

TOM NETHERLAND is a freelance writer. He can be reached at .