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Save money, and possibly your own life, by butting out
Susan Thompson
for Smoky River Express
My husband Doug’s trying to quit smoking again. He did it once before a couple of years ago, but he got drawn back in by smoking the occasional cigar. That eventually escalated into more frequent cigars and then cigarettes again.
It’s been a lifelong battle for him. He started smoking young. Both his parents smoke and Doug started the way a lot of kids do, trying his parents’ cigarettes.
His parents both still smoke. That’s despite the fact that my father-in-law recently battled colon cancer. They’ve overhauled every other area of their life in an effort to be healthy, and don’t even eat gluten anymore. But smoking is one unhealthy addiction they can’t kick.
Doug is trying to quit again using the nicotine patch, a method that does seem to be working well. He’s made it over three weeks without a single cigarette, although it’ll be a while before he kicks that need for nicotine enough to make it through a day without a patch.
Since we have two kids and neither of us wants to see them take up the habit, it’s important for him to quit to set a good example.
He doesn’t smoke in the house and never in front of our girls, but they still know he smokes.
We know he’ll also likely live longer, which makes me happy and is of course very important for our kids too. As a welder Doug’s already exposed to too many carcinogens as it is, from the fumes to the ultraviolet radiation and possibly even NORMLs (naturally occurring radiation that can contaminate metal used in the oilfield). The last thing he needs is to add smoking to that deadly mix. We don’t want him to become another one of the 3,000 or so people who die every year in Alberta from tobacco-related illnesses.
Apparently there are a lot of others in Alberta who could stand to butt out.
Statistics Canada just released figures showing that a little over 20 per cent of people in Alberta smoke. Manitoba has the highest smoking rate in the country at 20.8 per cent, while British Columbia has the lowest at just over 14 per cent.
The number of people who smoke in Alberta did drop a little since 2007, especially among teenagers and women. Smoking isn’t as cool as it used to be, happily.
Higher taxes on tobacco are another reason fewer people are smoking. For example, just a little while ago our premier repealed the increased “sin” tax on alcohol but left it in place on tobacco products. In all likelihood taxes will just keep going higher too, making it more and more expensive to smoke.
Just imagine the money you could save a month by quitting. My husband’s already noticing that he has more money to spend at the gas station for example, where he used to buy cigarettes.
If he can get off the patch too and we can stop buying those we’ll save even more, since the patch is expensive.
Every person who quits also saves money for the province. Smoking costs the provincial economy $1.8 billion every year in medical bills and sick days taken off from work. We all foot that bill in the taxes we pay, so it’s in our own self-interest to reduce it.
That means butting out is a great money saver for everyone, which can make a big difference during a recession.
At the same time, looking at the price of those patches, I can’t help but wonder if all the new stop smoking products out there aren’t just another way for somebody to turn a buck off of nicotine addiction. Now that smoking is known to be carcinogenic sales of cigarettes etc. must have dropped or will eventually drop. After all, smoking is being banned from public places, cigarettes are being hidden from view, and rules are much more stringent about advertising them. So, what to do if you’re in the business of selling the addiction to people? Find new ways to sell your nicotine, which you can now get in a patch, in gum, and even in a cigarette-like inhaler. The number of products with nicotine in them has been exploding lately, and I think it’s simply because they make a lot of money.
The thing is, if you marketed those products as a way to sell to nicotine, you’d be demonized. But market them as “stop smoking aids” and nobody says boo as you rake in the profits.
They don’t have to be banned in public or hidden away either since they’re socially acceptable.
Think about that for a minute, though. Do we tell people to deal with their heroin addictions by making heroine easily available - for a price- in a wide variety of new forms, like gum for example? Hardly. The downside to all the new “stop smoking” products is that they’re still letting people get their fix.
Maybe the best (and cheapest) way to quit then really is going cold turkey, by just slowly reducing the number of cigarettes you smoke.
I guess in my husband’s case we’ll have to wait and see. In the end I’m just glad he’s making the effort, tough as it is.
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