Jim Steinberg, Staff Writer
Posted: 11/18/2009 09:51:42 PM PST
Highland resident Dave Criner has been a smoker for 45 years.
Posted: 11/18/2009 09:51:42 PM PST
Highland resident Dave Criner has been a smoker for 45 years.
The 70-year-old retired schoolteacher and former Marine has seen this habit curtail his active lifestyle and he has grown weary of enduring society's relentless assault on his behavior.
"I'm being crowded out by society," Criner said. "You go to a restaurant and you have to stand outside to smoke. And people look at you like some kind of pariah."
Today is the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout. For the past 34 years, the day has served as a springboard to get smokers thinking about making a plan to quit or just quitting altogether on that day.
Public health officials say smoking is the leading preventable cause of death and illness in the U.S. and is a leading cause of numerous kinds of cancers, heart attacks and other health problems.
Criner's decision was based on his own internal clock. Nov. 30 is the day he's selected to stop smoking.
For about a month, he's been tapering down from two packs a day to one pack, maybe a little less on some days.
He logs every cigarette he smokes these days.
Society's impact on his lifestyle was symbolically underscored on a trip to one of Hawaii's less populated islands. He stood across the street from the airport in the designated smoking zone. The uncovered parcel of real estate was the only spot around where it was raining.
There were family considerations for Criner as well.
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When he smoked outside of his home or at the home of his grandchildren, "they would follow me outside," he said.
And the final straw, he said, was when he was diagnosed with peripheral artery disease, which limited his ability to walk more than 200 yards.
That limitation forced him to cancel a cruise with his wife to the Pacific Northwest and Canada. He said he couldn't have done the walking required to participate in various port excursions.
And continued smoking will interfere with the medication his doctor prescribed. His artery disease puts him at increased risk for a heart attack or a stroke.
While Criner said he will be leaving the ranks of smokers soon, the number of smokers in the United States to be increasing.
According to a recently released national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey, cigarette smoking rose slightly last year for the first time in nearly 15 years.
An estimated 20.6percent, (46million) of U.S. adults were cigarette smokers, up from 19.8percent in 2007. But the difference was not regarded as statistically significant.
In the 10 years from 1998 to 2008, the proportion of U.S. adults who were smokers declined 3.5percent, from 24.1percent to 20.6percent, the CDC said.
Beckie Moore Flati, spokeswoman for the American Cancer Society's Inland Empire office in Riverside, said the Great American Smokeout can be a milestone for someone who stops smoking for the day.
"If they can do it for a day, they can do it for a week and for a month," she said.
Researchers say that quitting smoking can increase life expectancy - smokers who quit at age 35 gain an average of eight years life expectancy, those who quit at age 55 gain about five years and even long-term smokers who quit at age 65 gain three years, says the American Cancer Society.
Ernie Medina Jr., a preventive care specialist at Beaver Medical Group in Redlands, said that after a smoker stops for a month, the physical addiction to nicotine subsides.
But treatment must continue to address two other factors that contribute to cigarette dependency, behavioral and psychological.
Many former smokers revert back to the calming effects of nicotine when they encounter stress - sometimes years after they quit, said Medina, who teaches smoking cessation classes and works individually with people wanting to quit.
But nonsmokers have stress in their lives, too, Medina said. And they have learned to cope in other ways.
So former smokers must find other ways to cope with stress, such as exercise, Medina said.
Former smokers may also revert back to smoking in a social setting, when someone, for example, offers them a cigarette.
Usually, that one-time break from their successful smoking avoidance leads to a person's return to smoking.
"I can think of only one time in 16 years where that didn't happen," he said.
But a former smoker's return to smoking is nothing to be ashamed of, he said. It should be a lesson.
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