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My father died from smoking

I want to begin today with a little story. My parents were divorced when I was three, and for six long years, I didn't see my Dad. Now a boy needs his Dad to come to the football game and say, "You played well, son. I'm proud of you — you're my boy!" He needs his Dad's hugs, encouragement, guidance and love. I didn't have that, and it was hard for me. A girl needs her Dad, too. Some of you in the audience do not have your biological father living at home with you, and you share the situation I remember. How do you feel about that? Are you angry, or sad, or maybe a little afraid, not having him around as much as you would like? Or a combination of feelings? Today we're going to spend some of our time taking about our feelings. How did I feel? At times, I felt angry, sad and afraid without my Dad around. For six years, I really missed him. When I was nine, I got the idea to write him a letter. It said, 'Dear Dad — I want to meet you. Where are you?' He was traveling at the time, and amazingly, my little letter was forwarded seven times from city to city. By a miracle, it got into his hands and he sent for me. I remember the day I first got word that he wanted to meet me, and I was jumping up and down with joy. When the big day came at last, and they showed me into the room where he was, I was saddened to find my Dad lying down, on his back, gasping for breath. He was dying from emphysema, caused by smoking the cigarettes that made our family wealthy. I only got to see him on five visits after that, and every time, he was increasingly sick and frail, and counting the time he had left to live. My Dad died from smoking I was 15, and that was hard. Later, my aunt and oldest brother would die because they smoked. That's why I chose to totally turn my back on my family's former tobacco business and walk away — and to do everything in my power to connect with young people, and persuade them to stay tobaccofree. I also did it because doing this work, I have been able to make a difference. It's feels wonderful to contribute to the lives of others — to be of service. So those are two reasons I chose to devote my life to the tobaccofree cause. In 1989 I founded The Foundation for a Smokefree America, and I'll dedicate myself to this work for the rest of my life.

Anti-smoking Links & Resources

At The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids site, you will get an understanding of the most important issues, which concern the present struggle between government and the tobacco industry. These include your State's current use of the $240 billion settlement with Big Tobacco, a report on the new global treaty on tobacco control, now signed by over 170 nations and ratified by 55. You'll also see samples of recent Kool and Camel ads with DJ's, hiphop artists, and youth partying on the cigarette package, and a report on cigarettes with candy flavorings, like Kuaii Kolada, Twista Lime, Warm Winter Toffee and Mocha Mint. As of May, 2005, seven States are suing to stop the ad campaigns for these brands, claiming they are targeting youth.

At this site, you can also write your member of Congress. Another site to easily lobby lawmakers for smoking bans is http://www.smokefree.net/. With a just couple of mouse clicks, children and adults alike can send an automated email to key State legislators, and become citizen advocates for local laws banning tobacco. Our favorite part is, legislators will hear the voices of children equally with those of adults. (See Smokescreen Activist Network below.)

Researching a specific issue, news article or school paper?
It's easy to search the tobacco news database!

At www.Tobacco.org, you can easily research any tobacco question or issue. Their news database contains daily summaries of every news article concerning tobacco, taken from four US newspapers: USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the New York Times. Their database goes back several years, and now contains over 100,000 news articles about tobacco issues. It is very easy to search.

To research a subject which interests you, go to Tobacco.org's home page. Then type in keywords in the search box appropriate to your search. Every news article containing those keywords will come up in the results.

It's a simple, useful and powerful research tool. The tobacco Daily News is presently produced by Gene Borio and his team, and was financed through a grant from Washington DC's American Legacy Foundation, the national Foundation created with funds from the settlement of the States' lawsuits against the tobacco industry. Search at www.Tobacco.org and you are likely to quickly find the answer to your specific question.

Get a free subscription to the Daily Tobacco News

Just go to http://www.tobacco.org/. Click on the Subscribe tab near the top of the page. Next, choose whether you want Daily News, Weekly News, or Breaking News. This means you can have the day's news about tobacco emailed to you daily, once a week, or several times a day, should you choose Breaking News. Next, choose the topics you want.

To avoid being deluged, we reccomend selecting only the Daily Top Stories (4 - 10 stories emailed per day).

However, you can still add in local tobacco news from your State. If you prefer, you can subscribe to the daily news by specific topic -- such as addiction, cessation, secondhand smoke, teen smoking, or the tobacco lawsuits.

Again, if you're just interested in tobacco issues in general, we reccommend starting by subscribing to only the major Daily News stories.

Real men ask directions

People who are the most successful at living life typically get plenty of help. For example, in business, a successful businesswoman or businessman gets a lawyer to write the contracts, an advertising agency to create the ads, a marketing executive to do the marketing, an accountant to do the accounting, a doctor when they're sick — people who succeed best get help, and lots of it. Even the greatest novelists have editors they count on for their invaluable feedback. Students often get mentors, adults who look after and guide their careers, and share their knowledge. Ask an adult you admire and trust to be your mentor. They might say no, but don't give up — ask someone else. Choose someone with high morals and ethical standards, and don't settle for less. I experimented with cigarettes as a teen. I never thought I'd get addicted, but by age 18 I was completely hooked. For the next 17 years, I tried and tried again to quit. I failed a dozen times. I finally quit smoking in 1985, and have stayed smokefree since then. Quitting smoking was one of the hardest things I ever did. In summary, if you are smoking, don't be afraid to get help. If you are using tobacco now, or experimenting with it, see the school nurse — or talk to an adult. Connecting with others is a big theme today. It's okay to talk to someone and get help. If you can't find anyone, get into an online program. Check our free Quitting Tips page for more info. And if you haven't started smoking yet, remember — tobacco is extremely addicting. You can get totally hooked much faster than you think. The best way to avoid getting addicted is simply to not smoke — no matter what.

Cigarette butts present a threat to wildlife

September 10th, 2007:

Facts "[Cigarette butts] also present a threat to wildlife. Cigarette filters have been found in the stomachs of fish, birds, whales and other marine creatures who mistake them for food ... Composed of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic, cigarette butts can persist in the environment as long as other forms of plastic."

There is a lot of misinformation out there regarding cigarette butt litter. The biggest myth is that cigarette filters are biodegradable. In fact, cigarette butts are not biodegradable in the sense that most people think of the word. The acetate (plastic) filters can take many years to decompose. Smokers may not realize that their actions have such a lasting, negative impact on the environment.

This myth has been perpetuated not just by the wishful thinking of many smokers, but also by the cigarette companies, who have taken great pains to keep their customers in the dark on this issue. It is very common for highly littered items such as soda cans, snack wrappers, and fast food containers to have a simple "Please Don't Litter" message. You won't find such a message on cigarette packs. Although our contacts in the industry are at a loss as to why they can't take this simple step, our best guess is that they would prefer to leave their customers blissfully ignorant. Maybe they think that people will smoke fewer cigarettes if they have to be responsible for disposing of them. We think they ought to give their customers the benefit of the doubt. Smoking and littering do not have to be synonymous, as many smokers have proven by example.

What happens after that butt gets casually flicked onto the street, nature trail, or beach? Typically wind and rain carry the cigarette into the water supply, where the toxic chemicals the cigarette filter was designed to trap leak out into aquatic ecosystems, threatening the quality of the water and many aquatic lifeforms. Cigarette butts may seem small, but with several trillion butts littered every year, the toxic chemicals add up!

GREAT SITES FOR KIDS!

http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/

Keep scrolling past the end bar!

http://www.ash.org/

Anti-Smoking Groups Push to Curb Cigarettes in Movies

November 15, 2005

CHICAGO -- The American Legacy Foundation and several other public health and anti-smoking advocates press their campaign to slap an R rating on movies that feature smoking on screen with an ad appearing this week in The New York Times, Roll Call and The Hill.

The ad highlights a two-year study by Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Hanover, N.H., and funded by the National Cancer Institute. The research concludes that one-third of U.S adolescents between 10 and 14 years of age who smoke started as a direct result of seeing smoking in the movies. The study was done by a telephone survey of 6,522 youths contacted between June and October 2003 and concentrated on their viewing of top 100 box office hits from 1998 though 2002, and 32 flicks that grossed at least $15 million during the first four months of 2003. ALF backed a similar study released last year, which found that 60% of G, PG and PG-13 films released between May 2002 and May 2003 included main characters that smoked.

The ad, also signed by top representatives from the American Medical Association, American Lung Association, American Heart Association, the National PTA and the American Academy of Pediatrics, urges the movie industry to exercise social responsibility and extend the R-rating to movies with tobacco imagery. "This voluntary step need not result in more films being rated R. It will simply keep smoking out of future G, PG and PG-13 films, producing huge public health benefits at virtually no cost," the ad states.

Most of those groups also are on board with the World Health Organization's proposal to assign an R-rating to any film that shows or implies tobacco use except when the dangers of smoking are demonstrated or to depict a historical figure that smoked. The coalition is targeting the movie industry because tobacco manufacturers don't pursue product placement deals, ever since the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement forbid that activity. The MSA, signed between big tobacco manufacturers and the attorneys general of 46 states, set the ground rules on how manufacturers could and could not market their products.

--Mike Beirne