Tobacco-Free Marion County

GRASSROOTS NEWSLETTER

July-August 2004Volume 3 Number1

You are invited!

Welcome to Tobacco-Free Marion County’s third year of advocating for a tobacco free community. To recognize the commitment of the Arkansas State Legislature to use Master Settlement funds according to the CDC’s best practices we invite everyone for our ‘Big Check’ presentation at our next Coalition meeting August 9, at 5:30 at the Marion County Health Unit in Yellville. Refreshments will be provided. Dignitaries are invited. Come show your support for effective tobacco prevention.

Is it hot yet? Sitting inside in the AC we start to notice just how much that smoke lingers. Research shows that changing the air inside enough to remove the toxins from tobacco smoke pollution can take hours. The aroma left in carpet or upholstery is an aromatic hydrocarbon and can cause cancer and triggers asthma. Air filtration can remove the smell but will not remove the poisonous gasses.

It’s time for the Fair!

While attending the Marion County Fair stop by TFMC’s booth and share a little education about secondhand smoke. North Arkansas Drug Awareness and Prevention will be doing smoking doll demonstrations Friday 7/27 and carbon monoxide testing will be available to demonstrate how tobacco smoke impairs the body’s ability to absorb oxygen. You thought the goats and the green beans were fun!

TFMC Newsletters in 2004-05 will be published bimonthly. Please keep in touch with us through our pages on the Ozark Youth Media Institute www.oymi.net and Marion County HomeTown Health, Inc www.marionhometownhealth.org websites.

Upcoming training

We have opportunities for tobacco cessation facilitator training. The ideal is that more and more people in the community become educated for cessation training and support. We’ll be compiling candidate names for the free cessation facilitation training coming up in September. If you, or someone you know, is in a position to work with others, we can provide them with a scholarship for this valuable training! Counselors, Pastors, Human Resource people can gain some useful skills and with a 27% adult smoking rate in a 2003 the community needs dedicated facilitators.

FDA Regulation

Nationally there are big happenings for tobacco prevention. The Senate Kennedy-DeWine bill will require FDA regulation of tobacco products as a special category, accompanying a tobacco farm buyout paid for by the tobacco cartel. The House bill is based on taking federal tobacco taxes that support children’s insurance, to buy out farmers in economic straits because of the tobacco cartel’s outsourcing of agriculture to the third world. A major concern is that FDA regulation will be made too soft. FDA regulation is yet another institutionalizing of the damage tobacco costs our society. Tobacco is the only legal product on the market that when used properly causes death. The CDC estimates every household in Arkansas pays $472 annually in excess state and federal support for the cost of tobacco illness.

Tell us your story

We know that tobacco use affects all of our lives here in Marion County and we want to hear your stories about your experiences with tobacco. Maybe you were raised in a smoking home. We’d like to hear about how it affected you and/or affects you still. We want to hear how you quit smoking, why. We want to hear about restaurants where the secondhand smoke was unbearable. Or maybe you’d like to share your experience with clean indoor air. We want to hear about the illness of relatives. One fifth of every day’s obituaries are the result of tobacco and too many of us have lost loved ones to the industry. Share your story. Help others realize that they are not alone in the suffering caused by a rogue industry. Help us bring people together challenging the tobacco cartel. Your voice can only improve the health and economic well being of our families and community.

We all deserve smoke free air.

Please respond to TFMC at PO Box 188, Pyatt AR 72672, or call 427-2620, or email tfmc@marioncounty.com.

Share your story!

Did you know?

· In the 2000 national elections Phillip Morris was the largest campaign contributor in the agri-business sector.

· The 1970 ban on tobacco advertising on television and radio was requested by the tobacco cartel because equal time anti-tobacco ads were affecting sales.

· Fox Media Magnate Rupert Murdoch sat on the Board of Directors for Phillip Morris from 1989 to 2001.

· Lung cancer has been the greatest cancer killer of women since1985 surpassing breast cancer and

all gynecologic cancers combined.

· 87% of lung cancer is caused by smoking.

· Since 1999 the tobacco industry has spent more than $101 million lobbying congress.

· There is up to 6 times the nicotine in spit tobacco as in a cigarette.

· The current administration in Washington D.C. is reorganizing the Centers for Disease Control

eliminating CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health.

· Minnesota enacted the first comprehensive clean air legislation in 1975.

· Only about 10% of the U.S. public is protected by clean air laws.

· 13.8 million packs of cigarettes are bought or smoked by Arkansas kids annually despite laws

against sales and possession.

· Up to 740 Arkansans die each year from secondhand smoke.

· The tobacco industry spends $106.2 million marketing a deadly drug in Arkansas each year.

· 90% of smokers were addicted before they could vote.

PO Box 188, Pyatt AR 27672

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
George Orwell The Tobacco-Free Marion County Newsletter is now published bi-monthly