Tobacco-Free Marion County

GRASSROOTS NEWSLETTER

May-June 2007Volume 5  Number 6

 

For the last 5 years TFMC representatives have been involved in community outreach to help Marion County residents become more aware of the effects of tobacco use and exposure and what they can do to protect themselves and their families.  Here are some activities from the last two months:

·    We set up a booth at the UA Extension Ready, Set, Graduate! program for all of the county’s high school seniors in May, where they had the opportunity to practice budgeting and financial management.  Our display focused on the $1,474 per year that a pack-a-day smoker in Arkansas spends on cigarettes alone.  Figuring in the additional health insurance premiums over non-tobacco users ($372), an annual professional teeth whitening and one pack of gum or mints a week (650), and one extra trip to the dry-cleaners per month (120), a smoker can expect to spend $2,616 a year if they don’t suffer any immediate health problems.   We then put that into a life-long perspective, with very conservative estimates at today’s prices for a cigarette smoker from ages 18-78 (60 years) and added in $1,000 for deductions in trade in value for smoked in cars, repainting and carpet cleaning to sell one smoked in average-size house (2,460), average lifetime health costs added over the price non-smokers pay (17,973), average smoker’s lost social security benefits from premature death by smoking related illness, i.e. money paid in but never paid back, (4,034),  periodontic fees (4,402), heart disease angioplasty or open heart surgery plus follow-up medical fees and 11 weeks lost wages (67,711), low birthweight baby’s 17 days average stay in neonatal intensive care (42,432 per child) and a smoking mother’s extra delivery costs (700 per delivery).  We gave them a current estimate of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease COPD  (makes it hard to carry even 10 pounds, walk a quarter mile, go shopping or attend events) treatments ($2,654 PER YEAR!), pancreatic cancer surgery (22,546), and oral cancer treatment if you’re not the one person per hour in the U.S. who dies from oral cancer every day (200,000).  We figured a lifelong smoker could easily spend over half a million dollars on the addiction, and a spit tobacco user’s lifetime average was just over four hundred thousand dollars.   We noted that these figures do not even include lung cancer, which has a very low survival rate, and the final statement was, “Your money or your life; either way, tobacco wins.” 

·    We also had this financial impact of tobacco use information available at the Bruno-Pyatt Parent Involvement Night in early May.

·    We set up a booth at the Marion County Relay for Life and collected signatures for the Arkansas Cancer Promise, which will be sent to the Arkansas Cancer Coalition for inclusion in efforts to educate lawmakers about cancer’s impact in Arkansas, where 1 out of every 2 men and 1 out of every 3 women are striken by cancer, killing Arkansans at a rate of 17 every day.

·    TFMC had a booth and sponsored a sidewalk chalk contest at the Bull Shoals Art in the Park.  The Art in the Park planning committee has adopted a policy, signed by Mayor Richter, that they will not accept tobacco industry funding for the event, the first event organization in Marion County to acknowledge the positive impact on our young residents of setting a tobacco-free example.  We did a lot of promotion for this event and would love to work with other organizations likewise.

·    The TFMC Program Coordinator gave a presentation about the health risks of smoking and breathing secondhand smoke to the new moms and moms-to-be who participated in the community baby shower sponsored by the Marion County Extension Homemakers.  Tobacco exposure during pregnancy and in infancy can result in fetal growth retardation, poor lung function, more frequent hospitalizations, many more cases of painful inner ear infections and bronchitis, then later problems with auditory processing, higher risks for attention and hyperactivity disorders, social anxiety, and lower math and reading scores.  One thing I forgot to tell them was that children who grow up with a smoking parent are more likely to become smokers themselves.

·    Did you see our new billboard.on Hwy 62 eastbound just before the new bypass which refers to a tobacco industry internal document calling children replacement smokers?  It shows a young child grinning over her homework proclaiming, “I’m nobody’s replacement smoker! Are you?” and advertises the phone number for the free SOS help quitting program, 1-866-NOW QUIT.   We are about to begin a new cycle of programming and one of our prime areas of outreach will be reducing susceptibility to experimentation with tobacco products.  According to the CDC Key Outcome Indicators for Evaluation Comprehensive Tobacco Control Programs, “even low levels of smoking experimentation (two to four cigarettes smoked by age 10 years) substantially increase the likelihood of daily smoking in adolescence.” 

·    This is not a TFMC activity,  but it’s great news:  Bree’s Place, the new gas station and convenience store and community gathering place in Pyatt, opened recently with a policy to not advertise tobacco anywhere in or on store property and not to sell tobacco out of a lighted display case.  These are excellent measures that help de-normalize tobacco in our community and exemplify the kind of adult behavior that will reduce youth susceptibility to tobacco use in Marion County.  Let’s say thanks to those fine folks!

 

On a statewide level, TFMC’s nationally recognized Media Coordinator and the TFMC Program Coordinator were invited to participate in the state’s Media Strategy Workshop to share our local perspective on tobacco prevention and help the LR-based ad agency develop their messaging as Stamp Out Smoking (SOS) starts it’s 6th year.

 

TFMC representatives were able to attend the Mississippi County Coalition for a Tobacco Free Arkansas banquet with former Surgeon General and Arkansas pediatrician, Dr. Joycelyn Elders as the keynote speaker.  She has called exposing children to secondhand smoke “child abuse” but begs us to be compassionate to smokers.  She called tobacco addiction “a disease with pediatric onset”, since 80-90% of smokers become addicted before the age of 18.  She praised the SOS Quitline, 866-NOW QUIT, but says we must do more.

 

On the national front, the Institutes of Medicine just released their report, “Ending the Tobacco Problem, A Blueprint for the Nation,” which echoes Dr. Elders’ remarks by explaining, “Adolescents generally recognize the harmful effects of smoking, but typically overestimate their ability to escape addiction and fail to appreciate fully the personal impact of the long-term health consequences.”  They note that tobacco production and marketing are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and recommend that the federal law be changed to allow for this.  The problem that many tobacco control experts recognize is that the current bill before Congress to grant the FDA regulatory authority over tobacco is weak in several areas.  As was noted in the 6-2-07 Washington Post editorial, “The head of the FDA has expressed concern about the bill. And a careful reading of the 155-page document reveals that, as proposed, it is a baby step for tobacco control and several giant steps for the tobacco industry to continue its carnage with impunity for decades. That, I imagine, is why Philip Morris supports it.”  Many organizations support this legislation, though, including The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids.  We will dedicate a larger section of the next newsletter to this important issue.

 

 

 

Tobacco-Free Marion County

PO Box 188

Pyatt, AR  72672