Tobacco-Free Marion County
GRASSROOTS
NEWSLETTER
November-December
2004
Volume 3 Number 3
Dear Members and Friends of
TFMC,
Happy Holidays!
Thank you for taking the time to educate yourselves and be active in the most important public health issue in America today. Tobacco use and exposure to others’
secondhand smoke are the first and third ranked causes of preventable
disease. Whether direct use or
secondhand exposure is the focus, when you speak up to offer information about
cessation (quitting smoking or spitting; remember the free Quit Line
866-NOW-QUIT) or stand up to say, “We all deserve smokefree
air,” you are living up to the commitment of membership in Tobacco-Free Marion
County. Thank you.
Increasing Diverse
Representation in TFMC Since we have about 100 new members who
signed up at our community event booths this Fall (County Fair, Turkey Trot, Hillbilly Chili Cook Off,
Bruno-Pyatt Family Fun Night, and Ozark Youth Media
Institute), I’d like to use this issue of the newsletter to orient members to
our local tobacco prevention program.
This bi-monthly letter itself is a work plan goal. Please interact with us, submit articles or
ideas, or write a letter to the editor if we strike a note with you. You can also visit us through Marion County HomeTown Health’s website, click on “Tobacco Free” under
the group listings: www.marionhometownhealth.org
where we post our recent coalition meeting minutes and the list of 18 smokefree restaurants right here in Marion County!
Creating Smoke Free Environments We recognize smokers are good people;
it’s the tobacco smoke pollution we object to.
That’s why the Arkansas Department of Health directs us to focus largely
on creating smokefree environments. Children, elders, and those with chronic
diseases are particularly vulnerable to exposure, along with employees and
customers at businesses where smoking is allowed.
This year
we provided educational kits to all parents and students in Marion County’s Head Start programs. Because kids’ small airways are so easily
clogged and still developing bodies can be permanently impaired by
environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), we encourage all parents to not allow anyone
to smoke in their homes or in the vehicle with their children. Secondhand smoke exposure causes ear aches
and bronchitis, triggers asthma, and is linked to cognitive and developmental
impairments. Pregnant women exposed to tobacco
smoke pollution increase their children’s risk of growth retardation (low birth
weight). Other risks include eye
problems, introduction of cancer-causing agents in the infant’s blood, tooth
decay, and later on in life, increased rates of smoking during adolescence. Protect our children.
We have
also worked with the Home Health providers at the Health Unit to carry the
CDC’s warning to the elderly and their care givers:
“Clinicians should be aware that such
exposure can pose acute risks, and all patients at increased risk of
coronary heart disease or with known coronary artery disease should
be advised to avoid all indoor environments that permit smoking.
Additionally, the families of such patients should be counseled not
to smoke within the patient's home or in a vehicle with the patient.
In addition to its impact on heart disease, exposure to secondhand
smoke causes lung cancer in non-smokers, respiratory infections and
asthma in children, and even death in exposed infants.”
Our next focus population will be business owners,
managers, and employees. We will poll representatives
from businesses with smokefree policies to get their
insights on what local benefits they can claim for clean indoor air. We’ll use their own words to create a peer
advocacy brochure and postcard which we can share with businesses that are still
smoky and still paying for the higher insurance premiums, increased maintenance
costs, lower productivity and increased sick days from allowing smoking in the
workplace. We think that these neighbors
will listen to their friends and study their competitors to insure the benefits
of clean indoor air for themselves, their workers, and their customers. We’d also like to hear from workers with
their stories regarding labor in either clean indoor air or having to breathe a
Class A carcinogen at work. We all deserve smoke free air.
Reducing Youth Access Another project
we’ll begin in the spring is follow-up visits to tobacco retailers to encourage
them to follow proven procedures which reduce illegal tobacco sales to
minors. During this year’s SYNAR compliance
checks with under-aged teen buyers, local retailers didn’t make a single
illegal sale to minors! Unfortunately,
when Arkansas Tobacco Control Board officers made their most recent visits, Marion County tobacco retailers made sales to minors at a rate
slightly higher than the state average, and it is the ATCB compliance
violations which carry a fine to the clerk and to the licensee as well.
Decreasing Advertising and
Promotion of Tobacco / Counter-marketing
Since the four largest tobacco companies agreed to not
market to minors in the 1998 Master Settlement agreement, their marketing
budgets have increased 84%, primarily on store counters (kids’ eye high), store
doors and windows (replacing billboards they are no longer allowed to buy) and through
promotional materials with youth appeal.
Ms. Davis’s speech class at Bruno-Pyatt High
has spent their Wednesday morning class with us for the last 11 weeks, learning
about tobacco industry marketing and effective counter-advertising and pro
clean-air techniques. We thank them for
the 4 video public service announcements you’ll soon be seeing on Channel 26, www.oymi.net
, or available to check out from the library. We have also offered “Proud to Be Smoke Free”
flag signs for local store windows and are pleased that over 50 establishments
have made a public display of their status!
If you’d like one, let us know.
Promoting Utilization of
Cessation Resources A dozen Marion, Baxter, and Newton County citizens took the QuitSmart
Cessation Leadership training we offered in September, and Marion County has graduated 10 quitters in its first class. Thanks to Chairman Jerry Strobel
for teaching the class. The next QuitSmart class will be in January and smokers and spitters are encouraged to call the TFMC office to enroll
ASAP. The program and nicotine
replacement patches are free to the first 132 quitters through this tri-county
cooperative opportunity. Arkansas
Tobacco Settlement dollars made this program available. The other option regional quitters have is to
call the free Arkansas Dep’t of Health Quit Line staffed by Mayo Clinic
counselors, leading to multiple one-on-one phone counseling sessions which many
rural residents find convenient and effective.
Our other cessation focus has been on women of child bearing age through
the Health Unit WIC and family planning clinics. While the overall Arkansas maternal smoking statistics fell from 1990-2002 by
over 20%, those between 15 and 19 years of age rose by 7%. If you have any ideas about how to reach this
vulnerable population, please share your thoughts with us now.
Statewide News Increasing numbers of Arkansans are protected from secondhand
smoke. The city of Fayetteville’s clean air ordinance went into effect in February
2004, protecting all employees and customers at work and in public. The entire campuses of UA Medical School, the
Children’s Hospital, and the Arkansas Department of Health are now totally smokefree, and so are 20 County Health Units (including Boone’s!). UA Fort Smith will be totally tobacco free as
of 1-1-05. Parks in
Russellville and Perryville are tobacco free. Local smokefree
policies promote changes in social understanding, de-glamorizing and
de-normalizing tobacco use while increasing public health standards. Two things to guard against in effective
tobacco control policy are preemption
(legal language in a weak state or national law that prohibits stronger health
protections from being enacted at the local level) and accommodation (the term the tobacco industry uses to convince
policy makers that “we can all get along” with increased ventilation or other
provisions which still allow continued exposure to secondhand smoke.) Secondhand smoke is proven to cause cancer,
increases risk of heart attach and stroke, triggers asthma, etc. It’s up to us to protect our families and
ourselves from exposure by educating the decision makers at our worksites and
daycares, public places and homes, and encouraging the adoption of smokefree policies wherever we spend our time. Smoking is a privilege, but breathing is a
right!
If you are receiving this in the mail but have an
email address, please let us know and save us a stamp!
tfmc@marioncounty.com
Tobacco-Free Marion County
PO Box 188
Pyatt, AR 72672
(870) 427-2620