Holly Quintana is furious about cigarette company advertising.
"Ooh, it enrages me," said Quintana, one of two instructors in the "quit smoking" classes run by the Salt Lake City-County Health Department.What particularly irked her was the four-part series of full-page ads that Philip Morris is currently running in USA Today, ads that attempt to show that the Environmental Protection Agency "manipulated science to serve a political cause" to show that smoking is dangerous.
Wednesday's ad asserted that the EPA is wrong in taking the position that secondhand tobacco smoke is dangerous.
"Time after time, it's been proven that it is (harmful), and there are conclusive studies that have gone out on it," she said of secondhand smoke.
Infants are more likely to have chronic bronchitis, middle-ear infections, asthma and general sickliness if they are surrounded by environmental tobacco smoke, Quintana said.
But on a wider issue, beyond the secondhand smoke argument, the whole approach of cigarette companies is false, she said.
Recent ad campaigns by tobacco companies have stressed the idea that smoking is a matter of freedom of choice: If someone chooses to smoke and has health consequences, then that's the smoker's own choice.
On the contrary, Quintana said, "I know the community's paying for it. I'm paying for it, for these people to smoke."
First, the community pays in the form of higher insurance premiums, because smokers get ill and the burden is carried by all who are insured. Second, costs go up for Medicaid and Medicare and others have to pay more, she said.
"What really makes me mad is the children," she said.
"This is the population that we really strongly work with, to get them to never start," she said of the department's anti-smoking efforts.
"But the tobacco industry targets them as their customers. In fact, 3,000 new customers a day are children."
The tobacco companies must recruit a huge number of new smokers because so many Americans die every day as a result of smoking. Young people are easy prey because the natural self-confidence of youth leads them to think they're indestructible.
Kids say, " `I quit last week and I can quit next week,' " she said. "And the next thing they know, they're up to two packs a day."
"What's really sad is that tobacco is the No. 1 killer. I think it should be mandatory that we have tobacco education in our (school) curriculum."
Quintana helped revamp the department's anti-smoking program, during which sessions meet for an hour a week for six weeks. It uses the buddy system and family support in an effort to help smokers kick their deadly habit.
But smoking is so addictive that some who try hard just can't stop - even people who have been diagnosed with illnesses caused by smoking.
Dr. Richard Kanner, a University of Utah professor of medicine and a pulmonary expert, said he is convinced that cigarettes are addicting. Smokers seem to have more trouble quitting than they might have in stopping the use of illicit drugs or alcohol.
"This isn't scientific data. This is personal experience from what the patients tell me," he said.
Kanner said smoking has many different bad effects on the body.
"You're inhaling thousands of compounds of chemicals when you inhale the smoke," he said.
In terms of lung problems, they face lung cancer, chronic bronchitis and emphysema. They are more apt to get heart disease and coronary artery disease, he said.
Kanner pointed out that blood vessels in both the heart and the brain are harmed by smoking. In the heart, it can cause a heart attack, while the same condition in the brain's blood vessels can cause a stroke.
Smokers are more at risk of cataracts, he said. They are more likely to get wrinkled skin, or suffer from peptic ulcer disease, cancer of the esophagus or bladder cancer.
But those who stop smoking immediately reduce their risks.
"In some cases, such as heart disease, your risk will come back to a nonsmoker's risk within a year or so," Kanner said.
"In lung cancer, it takes many years, and you'll probably never get as low a a never-smoker's risk. It's always slightly increased." But lung cancer is so rare a disease for nonsmokers that twice the risk isn't a grave danger.
"Your bronchitis frequently can clear up and your lung function in many cases can improve if you quit smoking."
Kanner said the former smoker's lung function probably will not get back to the level it was before he started puffing. But quitting can have profound, good effects on the body.
With many patients who learn they have lung cancer, the most common reaction is denial, he added. The denial is that they realize they have lung cancer but they say, "I'm going to beat it. The therapy's going to cure it."
"Unfortunately, the cure rate for lung cancer is very low," Kanner said.
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Additional Information
Class to help residents quit
The Salt Lake City-County Health Department's next "quit smoking" class begins today, with a group meeting from 5:15 to 6:15 p.m. New classes start every month.
The class costs $25 per person and meets for an hour once a week, for six weeks. Those interested in attending should call instructor Holly Quintana at 468-2742.
But Quintana warned that smokers must be serious about quitting and willing to make the sacrifice. Otherwise, they may take the class, get discouraged and feel that they failed. That may make it harder to take the class again.
To weed out those who aren't truly prepared to take the course and quit, she suggests that smokers think about it for a month and take a readiness test.
The test is designed to tell whether a person is addicted to smoking. It asks:
- "Do you smoke your first cigarette within 30 minutes of waking up in the morning?
- "Do you smoke 20 cigarettes, one pack or more, each day?
- "At times, when you can't smoke or haven't got any cigarettes, do you feel a craving for one?
- "Is it tough for you to keep from smoking for more than a few hours?
- "When you're sick enough to stay in bed, do you still smoke?"
Anyone who answers yes to two or more of the questions might be addicted, Quintana said.
Those who tried to stop smoking once or twice and have failed shouldn't give up hope, she added. "They're more likely to quit on their fourth or fifth time around . . . They have to want to quit."