The American Cancer Society’s (ACS) 31st Great American Smokeout is coming next Thursday, November 15.
ACS has designated the third Thursday of November as the day millions of Americans try to kick the tobacco habit “cold turkey.”
Queens smokers have been ending their addiction to cigarettes and other tobacco products in large numbers over the past few years. Aggressive anti-smoking television advertising by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) has attributed to a 21.6 percent decline in the number of Queens smokers from 2002 through 2006.
The DOHMH’s yearlong campaign, which ended last summer, was directed at all ages and graphically showed the effects tobacco has on the brain, lungs and arteries. Testimonials from families of smokers and smokers who are sick and dying had a great impact on television viewers too.
The ACS says that their theme this year is, “Quit. Win. Live.”
Tameron Ackley, regional vice president for the Queens Region of the ACS, reminds all smokers that, “If you can make it just 24 hours without picking up a cigarette, you’ll have made your first step towards quitting for good.”
This year, the ACS is taking their mission to cyberspace. From now until Monday, November 12, the Society is running their first-ever Great American Smokeout video contest on YouTube.
“We are asking people to create and post videos, one minute or less, telling us why you shouldn’t smoke,” explained Ackley. “It’s a way for people to speak their mind, tell their story and help others who are thinking about quitting.”
The winning video will earn a new 4GB iPhone, with runners-up receiving either an iPod nano or an iPod Shuffle. For more information about the contest go to the ACS’s Great American Smokeout web site at www.cancer.org/livefreesmokefree.
As the weather grows colder and nastier, do not be one of the herds of smokers, the “outcasts of society,” who huddle around the doorways of the businesses where they work. Stop freezing and catching colds, just to grab that clandestine drag or two without wearing a coat. You are not fooling anyone but yourself.
Tobacco use remains the number one preventable cause of cancer here and around the world. Don’t be one of the 440,000 premature deaths in the United States this year - QUIT SMOKING!
Congratulations DA Brown
We extend our sincerest congratulations to Queens County’s No. 1 Crime Stopper - District Attorney Richard A. Brown — for winning re-election on Tuesday, November 6.
Sure he ran unopposed. Who in their right mind would have run against his excellent record?
DA Brown has made Queens a wonderful place to live and raise a family and he will continue to do so for many more years!
