For once quitter isn’t a bad word.
With the smoking bylaw going into effect, Smoke-Free Calgary found the perfect opportunity to launch their mass media campaign to help smokers quit.
“We’re targeting the 18- to 24-year-olds as the new bylaw hits this age group the most,” says Karen Smith, program coordinator for tobacco control at the Alberta Cancer Board.
The mass media campaign will last another six to eight weeks.
And then the health agencies in Alberta start preparing for another major quitting campaign for 2008 when all public smoking will be outlawed.
The main focus of the Smoke-Free campaign is to raise awareness among four specific groups: Aboriginal young adults, post-secondary students, trades workers, and young adults affected by the new bylaw, according to Smith.
“We have lots of resources available for people who want to quit,” says Carole Parder, a tobacco reduction counsellor with AADAC
AADAC has a helpline available to smokers from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week. People calling the line can receive information about quitting and can call back for support.
The tobacco reduction counsellors set up a quit plan for the caller and call back daily if the person quitting needs the support, according to Parder.
“If a person has a craving (to smoke), they can call the counsellor for support,” Parder says.
The Alberta Quits website tries to encourage visitors to quit by informing them of how much they spend on their addiction based on how many cigarettes they smoke every day.
The site also houses a chat room where people who have quit, people who are in the process of quitting and people who are thinking of quitting can discuss problems and get help from other people in a similar situation, according to Parder.
But some young people just don’t want to quit.
Rey Salonga, a second-year digital graphics communications student at SAIT, says he’s seen the posters by Smoke-Free Calgary but hasn’t changed his mind about smoking.
“I’ve thought about it (quitting smoking), but I think it’s my choice and I don’t want to confirm,” he says.
“I’m not being confrontational but I don’t want other people’s ideas to be forced on me.”
Perhaps knowing the advantages of quitting would convert non-conformists like Salonga.
According to Dr. Roger Thomas, professor of family medicine at the University of Calgary, smoking not only increases one’s risk of getting cancer, heart disease and stroke but it also slowly wears down all the body’s organs from head to toe.
Quitting can be difficult and people start and stop many times before they finally quit and Thomas says starting and stopping is not necessarily bad.
“Quitting is like a sport, the more you practice the stronger you will get and finally you’ll stay off it,” he says.
And smokers can reduce their increased risk of disease to the risk of a normal person few years after they quit.
“Pancreatic cancer is the worst. But even that risk normalises for smokers in about 15 years,” Thomas says.
But smoking affects the health of the province’s economy as well.
“Tobacco costs Alberta around $1.8 billion annually, more than 70 per cent of this cost, is due to lost productivity,” says Michaleen Elabdi, public affairs officer for Alberta Health and Wellness.
The 2002 AADAC-led Alberta Tobacco Reduction Strategy (ATRS) aims to reduce the number of young people starting to smoke, encourage and help current tobacco users to quit and reduce children’s and non-smokers’ exposure to second-hand smoke.
ATRS is a long-term strategy for the Alberta government and its main objective is to reduce tobacco use by 50 per cent from 2001 to 2011, according to Elabdi. As of 2005, Alberta’s use is 4,418 million cigarettes per year, a decrease of 18 per cent.
