craigdailypress.com

Last year, Judy Hiester ran the Routt County Tobacco Prevention Program for the Visiting Nurses Association. This year, because of budget cuts, Hiester runs programs for both Routt and Moffat

counties.

"We have received one-fourth the dollar amount of what received (last year)," Hiester said.

There is now only enough money for her to work 16 hours a week for the program.

It will be hard to continue with the depth of programming that was offered before, but Hiester is confident that there will be a way.

"A lot can be done with or without funding," Hiester said.

The average number of people who smoke in Moffat and Routt counties, which, according to Hiester is between 11 and 22 percent of the population, is below the state.

Heister said studies have shown that 85 percent of those people want to quit.

"Tobacco is as addictive as other heavy drugs but still legal," Hiester said. "And it is one of the only things that has been proven to regularly cause death and disease in users. We can't allow the fact of less funding to affect our program. It is a serious health problem."

This year with decreased funding, Hiester is looking at trying to continue many of the same programs of last year including the Great American Smoke-Out, a 30-year-old program that targets smokers and provides information and counseling on how to quit the habit.

"We have a duty to the whole community," said Susan Birch, VNA director of the responsibility to provide services despite funding cuts.

However, she said that there will probably be less time for one-on-one counseling.

The Tobacco Prevention Program will be implementing some new outreach strategies this year including:

• targeting pre-school children with education about second-hand smoke
• creating some efforts with the schools regarding education about smoking and its effects
• educating the community more with the chewing tobacco program

"I think there is a tobacco company that is looking at running an advertisement that spit tobacco is the safe alternative to second-hand smoke," Hiester said. "But that completely ignores the health problems of spit tobacco use."

Adolescents will continue to be the main target of the program as research has shown that if a child can make it past 19-years without smoking they won't start.

"I think there has been some short-sightedness about a long-term problem," Hiester said, of the cut in funding to the Tobacco Prevention Program.

Liz King is an intern with the Craig Daily Press. She can be reached at 824-7031 or eking@craigdailypress.com.