Task Forces - Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drugs
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Meeting Schedule
The Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drugs Taks Force meets on the first Tuesday of every other month from 9:00 to 10:30 am.
Mission
The Greater Lowell Health Alliance launched the Tobacco Task Force to raise awareness in our communities about this deadly health situation. Our goal is to educate our community about the dangers of tobacco use, develop and implement a long-tern campaign to raise awareness, and share resources to prevent and help people to stop smoking. In the summer of 2011 we transitioned from our primary focus of tobacco prevention and cessation to addressing multiple layers of substance abuse including alcohol, tobacco and other drugs.
Current News
Ban on Tobacco Sales Approved!
On Nov 2, 2011, the Lowell Board of Health held a public hearing on a proposed regulation prohibiting the sale of tobacco products at Health Care Institutions, including stand-alone pharmacies and large retail stores containing pharmacies. Thirteen people spoke in favor of the ban and the regulation passed with an effective date of January 1, 2012. The community provided thoughtful testimony, including comments from three youth from the Lowell Teen Coalition.
Important Facts
The Facts
An estimated 440,000 Americans die each year from diseases caused by smoking. Smoking is responsible for an estimated 1 in 5 U.S. deaths. Cigarettes kill more Americans than alcohol, car accidents, suicide, AIDS, homicide, and illegal drugs combined.
Smoking damages nearly every organ in the human body, is linked to at least 15 different cancers, and accounts for some 30%
of all cancer deaths. And it costs the U.S. over $150 billion each year in health care costs and lost productivity.
Because cigarette smoking and tobacco use are acquired behaviors - activities that people choose to do - smoking is the most preventable cause of premature death in our society.
Who is Smoking
- According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 44.5 million US adults were smokers in 2006 (the most recent year for which numbers are available). This is 20.8% of all adults (23.9% of men, 18% of women) -- more than 1 out of 5 people.
- The numbers were higher in younger age groups. In 2006, CDC reported almost 24% of those 18 to 44 years old were current smokers, compared to 10.2% in those aged 65 or older.
- Nationwide, 22.3% of high school students and 8.1% of middle school students were smoking in 2004. More White and Hispanic students smoked cigarettes.
What Smoking Does
- Only about half of the deaths related to smoking are from cancer. Smoking is also a major cause of heart disease, aneurysms, bronchitis, emphysema, and stroke, and it makes pneumonia and asthma worse.
- Using tobacco can also damage a woman's reproductive health. Tobacco use is linked with reduced fertility and a higher risk of miscarriage, early delivery (premature birth), stillbirth, infant death, and is a cause of low birth-weight in infants. It has also been linked to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
- Smoking has also been linked to other health problems, including gum disease, cataracts, bone thinning, hip fractures, and peptic ulcers. It is also linked to macular degeneration, an eye disease that can cause blindness.
- The smoke from cigarettes (called secondhand smoke or environmental tobacco smoke) has a harmful health effect on those exposed to it.
Benefits of Quitting Smoking
Nicotine is a very addictive drug. People usually try to quit many times before they are successful. The US Surgeon General outlined the benefits of quitting smoking:
- Quitting smoking has major and immediate health benefits for people with and without smoking-related disease.
- Former smokers live longer than continuing smokers. For example, people who quit smoking before age 50 have one-half the risk of dying in the next 15 years compared with people who keep smoking.
- Quitting smoking decreases the risk of lung cancer, other cancers, heart attack, stroke, and chronic lung diseases such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
- Women who stop smoking before pregnancy or during the first 3 to 4 months of pregnancy reduce their risk of having a low birth-weight baby to that of women who never smoked.
- The health benefits of quitting smoking are far greater than any risks from the small weight gain (usually less than 10 pounds) or any emotional or psychological problems that may follow quitting.
Current Programs
Archives
- Programs and Initiatives
- Ready, Set, Quit! Lowell
- The Greater Lowell Health Alliance has been the lead organization in bringing the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Ready, Set, Quit! program to Lowell. Ready, Set, Quit! is a six-week smoking cessation program, offering nicotine replacement therapy to individuals working and/or living in areas with high smoking rates. The city of Lowell has a 50% higher smoking rate than Massachusetts overall, with the third highest rate of lung cancer deaths in the state.
- The Ready, Set, Quit! program provides a free, two-week supply of nicotine patches to smokers, as well as an option to sign up for six free telephone counseling sessions. The program worked through participants using the TRY-TO-STOP website and hotline (1-800-833-8678).
- Lowell General Hospital and Saints Medical Center go "Tobacco Free"
- The Greater Lowell Health Alliance was pleased to provide support to Lowell General Hospital and Saints Medical Center as both hospitals implemented tobacco-free campuses by the fall of 2007. Working with the Alliance, the hospitals took this important step in providing the healthiest environment for their patients, staff, and visitors. They join more than 500 hospitals nationwide that have already made this commitment, with more making the pledge every day.
- Tobacco products are now banned from all buildings, grounds, parking lots, and any vehicles on the hospital campuses. Both hospitals thank the community for supporting them in providing a healthier environment and reducing the number one cause of preventable cancer in our community.
- Tobacco Education in Lowell Schools
- When the Greater Lowell Health Alliance learned that there is no tobacco education program it the Lowell public schools, the Alliance and its Tobacco Task Force took action. Because the Lowell Public Schools lost funding for its tobacco education program years ago, the Alliance launched an effort to recruit volunteers from the community who would be willing to be trained to go into the schools to provide this much-needed education to the students. The Tobacco Task Force provides tobacco education training to volunteers who are health and education professionals from Lowell General Hospital, Saints Medical Center, Lowell Community Health Center, and UMass Lowell. Claire Golas, Safe and Drug-Free School Coordinator, and Mary Payne, Guidance Counselor at the Pyne Arts School, developed the leadership training in the early 1990s. The Task Force has just completed its third successful year of tobacco education in the schools.
- These volunteers - armed with their education and tool kits funded through a generous $15,000 donation by Lowell General's TeamWalk for CancerCare - visit each fifth-grade classroom in Lowell with this program. "It is critically important that we reach these schoolchildren at this age to help them make good decisions that will affect their health for the rest of their lives," according to Michelle Davis, LGH Manager of Community Health and Education and Chair of the Alliance Tobacco Task Force. "This great group of volunteers will have a tremendous impact on the health of our community."
- Interested in being a Tobacco Education volunteer? You don't need to be a health or education professional. You just need to be comfortable in front of a classroom of 10 and 11 year olds. It is a highly interactive program, using props such as the "jar of tar" and a demonstration of emphysema in which a volunteer tries to breathe through a tiny straw. Contact us for further information.
For More Information
Dahvy Tran
Coordinator
Greater Lowell Health Alliance
295 Varnum Avenue
Lowell, MA 01854
Tel: 978-788-7278
Email: dtran@greaterlowellhealthalliance.org