Now money from Colorado's tobacco tax is going toward helping people quit with free counseling and up to eight weeks of free nicotine patches delivered discretely to your door.Damien La Goy has been smoking for 29 years. His habit of two to three packs a day started when he was only 16 years old. After watching a friend and fellow smoker have a mild heart attack, and then seeing his mother this summer, La Goy figured it was time to make quitting smoking permanent.
"It's been almost eight months now and I've been through some really tough things. Like, I didn't smoke when my mother died in July, and that was hard. Don't think I didn't think about it, but my mother was so proud of me for quitting, shewas so hooked and couldn't quit. It would be just wrong after losing her for me to start again," says La Goy. Both he and Karen Nozik are among the thousands who've used Colorado Quitline to get tobacco out of their lives. People who use Quitline have seven times higher rates of quitting than folks who go it alone or who use patches without counseling. Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Doug Benevento, hopes the free patch program will free some of the 130,000 Colorado smokers from the financial burden of smoking, and will save health care costs directly related to tobacco use, which according to the state, runs more than $1 billion a year. "This really gives people an incentive to not only call the Quitline, but also to get a service that will actually help them overcome the physical addiction they have to tobacco," says Benevento.Here's how it works; smokers call Colorado Quitline toll-free at 1-800-639-QUIT (TTY 1-800-659-2656) and, with the help of counselors (many of whom have been smokers themselves) will set up a quit plan. Once signed up and going, a free four-week supply of nicotine patches will be sent to the person's home. Callers must be at least 18 years of age. The nicotine patches contain a steady dose of nicotine absorbed through the skin over a 16 to 24 hour time period. Maintaining a constant nicotine level in the bloodstream can help smokers avoid the dreaded cravings and discomfort associated with quitting. Dr. Marjie Harbrecht who is the medical director for the Colorado Clinical Guidelines Collaborative told reporters at a news conference announcing the free patch program that for every person who dies from smoking-related illness, another twenty people suffer smoking related diseases like emphysema, heart disease and more. Harbrecht says smoking costs us more than we even realize."In fact, more people die from smoking-related illness than homicide, suicide, car accidents, fires, AIDs, drugs and alcohol abuse, all combined," says Harbrecht. Epi Mazzei, who is the clinical quality manager at ColoradoQuitline is quick to point out that nicotine is the addictivecomponent of tobacco use, not theagent responsible for causing heart disease, cancer or lung disease.She says cigarettes contain more than4,000 chemicals and toxins that are the true disease instigators.State surveys show that 85 percentof Colorado smokers say they're thinking about quitting, and 64 percentsay they have tried to quit at least once. But only 2.5 percentare able to quit fully on their own. The Colorado Quitline has a quit rate of 28 percent, substantially more than patches alone, or cold turkey. Colorado also has the QuitNET online service to help smokers. It is also free, and offers 24 hour support from other smokers, and helps quitters see how much money they're saving and how much time they're adding back onto their lives by kicking the habit. Damien La Goy says while most smokers insist they can't afford to quit smoking, in his mind with tobacco tax picking up the tab on nicotine patches and counseling, they really can't afford not to quit.
