Tobacco Free Gallatin
Everywhere...By Everyone...At all times
Bozeman Public Schools-Gallatin County, MT
Department of Public Health & Human Services Montana Tobacco Use Prevention Program
Letters/Editorials
Smoke-free Home Pledge
The Gallatin County Tobacco Use Prevention Program in partnership with the Environmental Protection Agency wants to increase everyone’s awareness about the dangers of secondhand smoke through the Smoke-free Home Campaign.
This program offers you the chance to take a pledge to keep cigarette smoke out of your home, allowing you to take the first step toward a smoke-free life and keep harmful secondhand smoke away from your children.
Children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of secondhand smoke because they are still developing physically, have higher breathing rates than adults, and have little control over their indoor environments. Children exposed to high doses of secondhand smoke, such as those whose mothers smoke, run the greatest relative risk of experiencing damaging health effects:
- Exposure to secondhand smoke can cause asthma in children who have not previously exhibited symptoms.
- Exposure to secondhand smoke increases the risk for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
- Infants and children younger than 6 who are regularly exposed to secondhand smoke are at increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections, such as pneumonia and bronchitis.
- Children who regularly breathe secondhand smoke are at increased risk for middle ear infections.
By taking the pledge, you:
- Choose not to smoke in your home and do not permit others to do so. Small children are especially vulnerable to the health effects of secondhand smoke.
- Choose to smoke outside, if you must smoke.
- Moving to another room or opening a window is not enough to protect your children.
For more information about taking the Smoke-free Home Pledge, visit Environment Protection Agency website: http://www.epa.gov/smokefree/pledge
Rick Gale
Gallatin County
Clean Indoor Air Coordinator
Time to stop thinking of tobacco use as a bad habit
Nicotine is one of the most heavily used addictive drugs in the United States. Its delivery system includes all forms of commercial tobacco products from an industry that spends millions of dollars to market nicotine addiction.
The use of commercial tobacco products remains a massive public health problem for this and future generations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that 20.6% of the adult US populations are smokers and that 400,000 individuals will die prematurely due to tobacco use.
It is time to stop thinking of nicotine and tobacco use as a bad habit and treat it like a medical issue. Like addiction to heroin or cocaine, addiction to nicotine is a chronic, relapsing disorder, even in the face of negative health consequences.
People don’t smoke cigarettes to get high or buzzed, but because when they don’t, they fell bad. Nicotine changes the brain cells that control how good we feel.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, less than 10 percent of unaided quit attempts lead to successful long-term abstinence. However, studies have shown significantly greater cessation rates for smokers receiving interventions compared to control groups who do not receive the interventions.
Interventions that involve both medications and behavioral treatments appear to show the most promise.
The primary medication therapy currently used to treat nicotine addiction is nicotine replacement therapy, which supplies enough nicotine to the body to prevent withdrawal symptoms.
Addiction should be treated like other chronic conditions with proven and accessible prevention and treatment methods.
And the research shows that the best way for people to quit smoking is through evidence-based smoking cessation programs like the Montana Tobacco Quit Line (1-800-QUIT-NOW).
Rick Gale
Tobacco Prevention Program Coordinator
Gallatin County Tobacco Use Prevention Program
