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Smoke-free air priority over desire to smoke

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News from the Lake County Health Department

POLSON — Montana’s legislature passed the Clean Indoor Air Act (CIAA) in 2005. The Montana Clean Indoor Air Act recognizes that the need to breathe smoke-free air has priority over the desire to smoke. 

Laws like the CIAA reduce heart attack rates by at least 20 percent. According to a 2006 statement from the Surgeon General, more than 50,000 Americans die annually from secondhand smoke exposure, nearly four-fifths of them from heart disease.

Second-hand smoke can also trigger asthma attacks in children. Because there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke, Montana joined more than 26 other states and U.S. Territories who have also passed comprehensive smoke-free laws, which includes restaurants and bars. In states that have not passed comprehensive laws (usually excludes bars and casinos), local municipalities, cities and/or counties can pass their own comprehensive smoke-free laws, and as of October of 2013, more than 600 in the U.S. have. 

Benefits of the law are three-fold:

• Patrons and workers alike are protected from the deadly health effects of secondhand smoke exposure.

• More people who smoke will try to quit.

• Fewer Montana youths will begin smoking.

One reason Montana joined more than half of the U.S. states in implementing such a law is that when you breathe in secondhand smoke, you breathe in thousands of chemicals. Secondhand smoke, which is the smoke coming off the end of the cigarette and the smoke exhaled by the smoker, causes damage to blood vessels, the heart and lungs in as little as 30 minutes. Cancer-causing chemicals such as benzene, formaldehyde, polonium 210 (radioactive); toxic metals such as lead, cadmium and arsenic; and poisonous gases such as hydrogen cyanide, butane and ammonia are just part of the reason the smoke is so toxic. Richard Carmona, Surgeon General of the U.S. in 2006, determined there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke, and hence the basis of smoke-free laws. 

If you, or someone you know, would like help quitting tobacco of any kind, call the Montana tobacco Quit Line toll-free at (800) QUIT NOW (1-800-784-8669). Using medications correctly, and at the right time and right dosage, can be the key to overcoming nicotine’s powerful addiction. Benefits of the Quit Line for cigarette or smokeless tobacco users include up to six free weeks of nicotine replacement therapy (gum, patches or lozenges) if appropriate. Cutting down gradually on the amount of nicotine in the body helps many people be successful. There is also a new program available to pregnant women. Pregnancy participants are eligible for six weeks of free NRT during pregnancy with a prescription and are eligible for an additional six weeks of free NRT postpartum, prescription required if they are breastfeeding. The Quit Line will explain to the caller how and when these medications will be mailed out. 

The citizens whom this law is designed to protect have the right to file complaints against individuals smoking in an enclosed place or the owner who allows smoking in an enclosed place by logging onto tobaccofree.mt.gov. 

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