Smoke Stoppers, the national on-campus anti-smoking program states that if you smoke a $3 pack of cigarettes everyday for 20 years you will spend about $21,600.
The Employee Heath Promotion Program, which is available to University staff, faculty, and students, is offering a program for individuals who want to quit smoking.
The program has been available to campus personnel for the last four years.
The program cost $55 and upon completion, $20 is reimbursed. The course lasts 21 days and helps the participants learn about the problems associated with smoking, including bad breath, stained teeth, yellowed fingers, lost work days, lingering coughs, colds and flu, periodontal disease and tooth loss.
"The objective of the program is to help the individual change behavioral patterns that are associated with smoking, such examples are the cigarette after dinner and smoking while they are driving, and helping them to quit," said Judy Wright, program manager of the employee health program.
Former smokers and University of Michigan-trained psychologists founded the
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Smoke Stoppers program in 1977. The national program has helped more than two million people stop smoking.
The program is also available to students who use smokeless tobacco. Smokeless tobacco contains four times the amount of nicotine in one pinch than in one cigarette, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The center and the American Lung Association say oral cancers account for 4 percent of all cancers, yet half of those individuals are dead five years after being diagnosed.
The program is offered at UNM during the fall and spring semesters. Each participant is provided with a "quit kit" and receives four telephone support sessions with a personal counselor. After sessions are completed, the participant receives an additional six telephone sessions during the next 12 months.
The program has a 25-30 percent success rate and those participants who use other "quit smoking" aids have a success rate of nearly 50 percent, according to Wright.
According to figures released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, smoking-related diseases kills 400,000 American each year.
The American Cancer Society indicates that 30 percent of people who die of coronary heart disease smoked and 85 percent of all cases of lung cancer can be attributed to smoking. Additional research by the group indicates that people who smoke have 10 percent more carbon monoxide in their blood than people who do not.
Also, men who smoke have a higher rate of impotence than men who do not.
The program's first fall meeting was Monday, Sept. 8, and the next program is scheduled to begin in January. For more information contact Wright, at jgwright@unm.edu or visit the EHPP office in Johnson Center Room 162-B.
