State’s New Smoking Ban Fires Up Attempts to Quit Habit: Interest in Cessation Programs Rises

By Julie M. Mckinnon, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio

May 13–The state’s new smoking ban has triggered a ripple effect locally of people who are seeking professional assistance so they can kick the habit.

Health officials in the area have seen increases in cessation classes, hypnosis treatments, and even referrals to tobacco quit lines recently — and they’re connecting those jumps to the ban that was approved last year and started being enforced just this month.

Mercy Health Partners has at least doubled the smoking cessation classes it offers. The number of people seeking hypnosis to stop smoking has increased 20 percent at Hypnotherapy Associates of Northwest Ohio in Perrysburg.

And Toledo Hospital referred 62 patients to the Ohio Tobacco Quit Line last month in addition to those ProMedica Health System counsels. Normally the hospital refers one or two in the same period.

More northwest Ohioans such as recent St. Luke’s Hospital smoking cessation patient Tammy Theaker, who found it was inconvenient not to be able to light up in restaurants and bars because of the statewide smoking ban, are getting professional help with their nicotine addiction.

“I’m very happy that I stopped,” the Holland woman said Wednesday, which marked her 18th day without a cigarette. “Very.”

With options for where smokers can legally light up narrowed to establishment patios or across the state line in Michigan, a number have said the ban may be the final impetus to quit the habit.

Former longtime, two-pack-a-day smoker Rick Conley said he voted for the smoking ban. The 54-year-old Waterville man quit smoking last year with the help of a fairly new prescription drug called Chantix and a cessation class at St. Luke’s in Maumee.

Now Mr. Conley — who even refused a celebratory cigar after his granddaughter was born two months ago — can go out in smoke-free establishments for a couple of beers after golf or with clients without the fear of getting sucked back into smoking, he said. “I don’t like to be around it,” Mr. Conley said. “I’m afraid of the temptation.”

Chantix works on nicotine receptors in the brain to help overcome nicotine cravings and withdrawal while lessening pleasure from smoking. The classes address behavioral issues and psychological needs. And the combination, Mr. Conley said, was far more successful than past smoking cessation attempts using nicotine-replacement patches, gum, inhalers, and other products.

“None of that worked, didn’t even come close to working,” he said. “I would smoke when I had the patch on.”

Another former two-pack-a-day smoker, Greg Yingling of Toledo, also had tried to quit before succeeding this year with Chantix and classes at Toledo Hospital with his sister, Nicole Yingling. Looking at a pig’s lung demonstrating damage from 20 years of nicotine use — about the same amount of time he had smoked — was a turning point in the class, Mr. Yingling said.

“There was no getting around it,” said the 46-year-old. “After that, you really start paying attention.”

The average smoker needs five to seven attempts to quit smoking, said Beth Schieber, spokesman for the Ohio Tobacco Prevention Foundation. “We view every attempt as good practice,” she said.

And each smoker, professionals say, needs different combinations of counseling and perhaps medications to help them quit.

At St. Luke’s, for example, smoking cessation patients can attend either group or individual sessions depending on what they need, a choice that Toledo Hospital expects to begin offering next month. Personnel from both hospitals also go to workplaces to set up programs for employees.

St. Luke’s also has a weekly support group for those who have quit smoking, are trying to, or are considering it. Thanks to a grant from the Ohio Tobacco Prevention Foundation, St. Luke’s is offering smoking-cessation classes for free.

“We just want to give everybody out there a fighting chance to live the life they’re supposed to, a healthy life,” said Holly Kowalczk, a St. Luke’s tobacco treatment specialist.

Toledo Hospital has tried to answer all excuses smokers may have. Foundation grant money can cover costs for sessions and medications if insurance doesn’t, and for smokers who are afraid of gaining weight while quitting, a two-month family membership at Wildwood Athletic Club awaits those who successfully complete counseling, said Brian Sanders, manager of pulmonary rehabilitation and function at Toledo Hospital.

One grant Toledo Hospital received from the foundation calls for personnel to ask patients about their smoking history and exposure so they can help those ready to quit. That program will be extended to other ProMedica hospitals in the next two years.

“This is a huge endeavor,” Mr. Sanders said. “We’re trying to … get to the motivated patients.”

The University of Toledo Health Science Campus is preparing to offer a formal smoking cessation class in June and hopes to start a support group too. Part of the reason area hospitals such as the University of Toledo Medical Center, formerly the Medical College of Ohio Hospital, are expanding cessation offerings is because they are among those that have pledged to eliminate smoking anywhere on their grounds by year’s end.

Mercy Health Partners has increased its classes and is offering them at all three Toledo area hospitals — St. Vincent, St. Anne, and St. Charles Mercy — to help meet employee needs, spokesman Sarah Bednarski said.

The Ohio Tobacco Quit Line, meanwhile, is a free counseling and guidance service from the foundation where users get up to five telephone sessions. The tobacco foundation also will split the cost of nicotine-replacement patches with participating employers, including Wood County, and provide discount coupons for other smokers who need them, said Ms. Schieber, the organization’s spokesman.

Calls to the quit line more than tripled after the ban was imposed, going from 100 a day to as many as 400, Ms. Schieber said. They have stabilized of late to between 150 and 200 calls a day, she said.

At Hypnotherapy Associates, owner and master hypnotherapist Robin Deibis said smoking-cessation sessions are up 20 percent so far this year from last year. But she expected the demand for hypnosis to be even higher since more employers are eliminating smoking.

“This is a wide-open market because there are so many smokers out there,” Ms. Deibis said.

Like Mr. Conley and Mr. Yingling, Ms. Theaker used Chantix to finally quit. The 39-year-old smoked about 10 cigarettes a day, and she had been urged for years to quit by her husband and daughter, Brittany.

“It’s so terrible just to do it around kids anymore,” Ms. Theaker said. “Now I can tell my daughter, ‘You don’t need to do this — there is no smoking’ — and not be a hypocrite about it.”

Contact Julie M. McKinnon at: jmckinnon@theblade.com or 419-724-6087.

—–

Copyright (c) 2007, The Blade, Toledo, Ohio

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.