This week we premier our new blog series “Tobacco & Twenty-somethings” which will take a look at tobacco use and tobacco control through the eyes of our own twenty-something, Stacy Song. Every week Stacy will blog about tobacco through her own very unique lens. We hope you enjoy!
In today’s society, women are obsessed with being skinny and the newest dieting fads. Source: I am a woman in today’s society. I’ve tried low-carb, no-carb, paleo, the master cleanse…you name it! Although I normally stick with a diet for only a few days before giving up, I know the feeling of just wanting to lose a few pounds. I was talking to an incredibly thin co-worker last week (not at the ALA) who told me she used to be heavy in high school. Of course, my first response was, “How did you do it?” Jokingly, she responded, “The cigarette diet really works.”
Although she laughed about it, she told me cigarettes actually did help her lose weight. I had heard about this before, about how supermodels smoke tons of cigarettes to suppress their appetite and how some people just drink water and smoke cigarette to have the same effect. Because nicotine is a stimulant, it is said to suppress your appetite and keep your brain satisfied. It can aid with weight loss, but it obviously comes with health risks. My co-worker now smokes close to a pack a day but she still remains thin. She wants to go into the Air Force but doesn’t know if she can complete basic training because her lungs and body won’t allow her to run one mile without feeling like she might die. She thinks this is because she is out of shape, and although that is one of the reasons, her addiction to cigarettes is definitely the main cause. Read More »
Guest Blogger – Serena Chen, American Lung Association in California
Debi Austin was a force to be reckoned with. When her anti-tobacco industry commercial hit the air waves in 1996, we saw a woman who was getting back at the industry that had hooked her into smoking at age 13 – by defiantly smoking a cigarette through the hole in her throat. A hole, a stoma, created when doctors removed her cancerous vocal cord, that was brought to her courtesy of RJ Reynolds and Camel cigarettes. She takes a puff, and then growls, “And they say smoking is not addictive.”
During one of her numerous presentations to high school kids, she remarked, “I am the worst-case scenario that your mother told you about,” she said. “I am the walking dead, the castoff of the tobacco industry that they can’t fix, they can’t heal.”
Debi Austin was scary, and we, tobacco control advocates, loved her. She reached the kids who wouldn’t listen to us, she touched the most hardcore addicted smokers, and she told the kind of truth that only a survivor can tell.
In 2000, the Alameda County Tobacco Control Coalition invited her to speak at one of our coalition meetings and it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, maybe even love affair. The Bay Area school districts all clamored to have her speak to their students and Debi simply loved “hanging out,” with the advocates afterwards over dinner where she would tell what we fondly call “Debi stories.” Stories of her childhood and wayward youth. She would drive up to Oakland for our regular quarterly meetings even if she wasn’t speaking. Read More »
Last weekend, I walked into a bar and saw people smoking inside. My first reaction: “Why aren’t the bouncers stopping them?” My second reaction: “Why are those cigarettes in cool colors?” I then walked up to these smokers and realized they were smoking E-cigarettes. I have seen them before because my dad tried them to quit a few years ago (he said they didn’t help). But back then, they just looked like long plastic pens. The E-cigarettes these people were smoking came in different colors and they were proud to show them to me.
After they showed me their different E-cigarettes that came in pink, white, black and blue, I blatantly told them that those will not help them stop smoking and there haven’t been enough studies to know if what they are inhaling and exhaling will cause harm. Their responses were along the lines of “At least I’m not smoking a real cigarette.” Although this is a common excuse used by those that smoke e-cigarettes, they are still smoking where and when they would normally be prohibited from doing so. The “freedom” to smoke where you want and the belief that this will help them quit are what grabs consumers, however, a quick Google search shows me that E-cigarette brands acknowledge in small print that they are not a cessation product and are marketing themselves as a new and stylish way to smoke. Read More »
Adults with mental illness are in a category all of their own – smoking is 70% higher for adults with mental illness. This is according a report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in collaboration with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which states that nearly 1 in every 5 adults in the United States (about 45.7 million Americans) have some type of mental illness.
The report also confirms that adult smokers with mental illness smoke more cigarettes per day than those without a mental illness, about 11 cigarettes a day. These statistics are even more alarming among minority and low-income people who experience mental health problems. Read More »
Last week we posted the first half of an interview with Smokefree Air For Everyone (S.A.F.E.) on their campaign for smokefree housing in Santa Monica. Today we learn more about their lessons learned from their efforts.
Center: Can you share some of the lessons learned from the campaign?
S.A.F.E.: Santa Monica has several city commissions and we presented to them more than once, so the leaders of the community were aware of our campaign. The Disability Commission wrote a letter in favor of regulating smoking in apartments. The leaders of the Democratic Club spoke vehemently against us. (That hurt.)
But we were very fortunate that most of our coalition members stuck with us over the years. We were also fortunate that our coalition continued to grow; new people joined throughout the campaign. Also, our coalition members, who at first had been very shy about speaking, became great speakers; their passion for the issue was central to the success of the campaign.
Success happened a little at a time. At first the city council members ignored us. We would speak during public comment time, which was as the end of the meeting, frequently as late as 1 am, when council members were drifting quietly away. Finally, after two years of effort, the council enacted no smoking in the common areas of apartments and condos. Two years after that, due to our tenacity, the city council enacted no smoking on balconies and patios of apartments and condos on September 9, 2010. Read More »
This week we premier our new blog series “Tobacco & Twenty-somethings” which will take a look at tobacco use and tobacco control through the eyes of our own twenty-something, Stacy Song. Every week Stacy will blog about tobacco through her own very unique lens. We hope you enjoy!
