Tobacco Awareness Month

November makes me think of leaves beginning to change their colors, bands marching in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the mouth-watering aroma of a succulent turkey roasting in the oven.  What is not widely known, however, is that November is Tobacco Awareness Month and November 15 is the Great American Smokeout Day.

According to the American Cancer Society, in 1971, Arthur P. Mullaney asked people in Randolph, Massachusetts, to give up cigarettes for one day and contribute the money they would have spent on cigarettes to a scholarship fund.  In Minnesota, Lynn Smith, publisher of the Monticello Times, asked smokers in her state to abstain from smoking for one day in 1974.  The idea caught on.  Since 1977, the Great American Smokeout Day has been sponsored nationally by the American Cancer Society on every third Thursday of November. It aims to encourage Americans to quit smoking for 24 hours.  The hope is that if they can stop smoking for a day, why not make it a lifetime?  

Teens Feel Pressure to Smoke

Great American Smokeout Day is not a day just for adults, but also for teens—and for good reason. According to the National Youth Tobacco Survey, 90 percent of smokers had their first cigarette before the age of 21, one-third of them at 14.

“I wanted to smoke for some time last year since it seemed like everyone was doing it,” says Herbert, 16, of New York.  “All my friends smoked and even my dad smoked, and I saw ads for it, so getting cigs wouldn’t have been a problem.”

Though there is an age restriction on buying cigarettes that does not stop store owners from selling to teens and teens from buying.

Tobacco promotion, through ads on the Internet, on billboards and in magazines, constantly exposes teenagers to smoking.  In 2005, tobacco companies spent $15.6 billion dollars on advertising.  Movies also aid the sale of tobacco.  Fifty-two percent of teens with nonsmoking parents started smoking because of exposure to the smoking they saw in movies, according to the study Effect of Viewing Smoking in Movies on Adolescent Smoking Initiation.

And it’s not just peer pressure, advertising and the movies—it’s the influence of some parents, too.  Teens with two parents who smoke are more than twice as likely to become smokers than those whose parents don’t smoke. Living with a relative who smokes increases the chance of lung cancer, not just to the smoker but to those affected by the secondhand smoke.

“When my dad smokes, it smells so bad, and I feel like if I inhale, it’ll contaminate my own lungs,” says Eryn, 15, of Arkansas. “It makes me worried for the future, like, is my dad going to die of cancer?”

Health Effects of Smoking

 Dr. Karl Hebbe, a pulmonologist (a doctor who specializes in the treatment of the lungs) in Lincroft, New Jersey, had this to say about teens and smoking: “About half my patients started smoking at young ages, around 11 to 15. It’s definitely worse off the younger they start.”

According to the American Cancer Society, smoking causes about 87 percent of lung cancer deaths, and lung cancer is the number one cancer killer in America.  Smoking is also the major cause of cancers of the larynx (voice box), mouth, esophagus, bladder and throat. 

When I ask Josh if he will be taking a hiatus from smoking on the Great American Smokeout Day, he replies, “I’m setting a date to quit, so hopefully I won’t be smoking at all by then.”

Smoking isn’t a subject that we can just roll our eyes at during D.A.R.E. classes.  It’s a serious issue with serious side effects. This November, between the frantic Thanksgiving plans and the early holiday shopping, remember to put down that cigarette and remind others to do so as well. It’s the holidays after all, a time to stop and smell the turkey roasting in the oven.               

For more information on kicking the smoking habit, click here or visit the American Cancer Society at www.cancer.org.