My Community, My Health~~Week of March 4, 2019

My Community, My Health

In partnership with WYLN (Westshore Young Leaders) we are promoting “My Community, My Health” and Kick Butt’s Day on March 20, 2019 to help people quit tobacco.

In the United States, tobacco use kills more than 480,000 people each year – that’s more Americans than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined.

Here are some other key facts:

· The vast majority of smokers start as children. In the U.S., 90 percent of all smokers start while in their teens or earlier.

· Every day, another 350 kids become regular smokers. One-third of them will die prematurely from a smoking-caused disease.

· Tobacco use costs us $170 billion each year in medical bills.

· It’s not just cigarettes that are bad for your health. Other forms of tobacco, including cigars and spit or smokeless tobacco, are also harmful and addictive.

· Secondhand smoke is also hazardous – it kills over 41,000 people each year. Secondhand smoke contains more than 7,000 chemicals, including at least 69 that cause cancer. According to the Surgeon General, secondhand smoke causes heart disease and lung cancer in nonsmoking adults and respiratory problems, sudden infant death syndrome, low birth weight, ear infections and more severe asthma attacks in infants and children.

There is good news: The United States has made a lot of progress in reducing smoking by both youth and adults. We’ve cut adult smoking by more than half since the 1960s, and youth smoking in half since 1997. But 8.0% of high school students and 15.1% of adults still smoke, so we still have a lot of work to do.

Quitting starts here.

Call 1-800-QUIT-NOW