Wigand address youth smoking dangers

Students heard tobacco control advocate Jeffrey Wigand speak about the
health risks involved with smoking Wednesday night in Warriner Hall’s
Plachta Auditorium

Rochester senior Erika Schmidt, vice president of the Risk
Management for the Panhellenic Council, started the evening by giving
the results of a survey that was taken by 500 CMU students.

The survey determined that more females than males smoke — 71.9
percent to 28.03 percent.

“Seventy percent of them want to quit and 88 percent said that they
would quit if they had a way,” Schmidt said.

Wigand said he would take a different approach and discussed the
science behind tobacco addiction.

Wigand, who was the subject of the 1999 movie “The Insider,” blew
the whistle on malpractice in the tobacco industry in the mid-1990s. He
focused on youth prevention as well and said if youth smoking isn’t
stopped, there will be a holocaust by the year 2015.

“One cigarette, one child, one addict,” Wigand said. “Smoking is not
a character or moral issue, but it is an illness.”

He began with discussing the five stages that people go through to
become addicted and the health consequences. He said 90 percent of
smokers start at age 18, but that age is dropping.

“In underdeveloped countries, children barely out of diapers are
starting an addiction,” he said.

Wigand discussed in-depth how the tobacco industries spend more than
$15 billion annually on advertisements that appeal to children. He
referred to Schmidt’s study, saying girls smoke because they think it
makes them thin and glamorous, giving them a false “badge of maturity.”

Wigand also described the addiction.

“Once they build a tolerance, they ratchet up the nicotine dosage to
20 mg a day, about a pack and a half,” he said.

Wigand said tobacco companies put additives like chocolate, butter
fat, lemon juice and glycerine into tobacco to make it sweet and more
addicting to the smoker. He also said tobacco has been discovered to be
a component in cervical cancer and lung cancer is the second largest
killer of American women.

Mothers who smoke during pregnancy cause damage to their babies, he
said.

“Babies born to moms who smoke (weigh) less than five pounds,”
Wigand said. “It’s a ugly sight.”

Many states are now smoke-free in public areas — 13 states have
banned smoking from public restaurants, bars and shopping centers.

“The government has a right to intervene on public health when harm
is put in its way,” Wigand said.

His program to quit smoking is called Nicotine Replacement Therapy.
He described using nicotine gum or the patch, behavior modification,
diet management, a graduated exercise program and a support group.

After one year of quitting, the risk for a heart attack is decreased
50 percent. After 10 years, the chance of getting lung cancer also is
decreased by 50 percent.

He said secondhand smoke is three times more toxic than mainstream
smoke because it is less hot and can be breathed deeper into the lungs.

“The number one emergency visit cause for children is secondhand
smoke,” Wigand said. “Michigan has chosen not to protect the future of
the children.”