With the New Year come resolutions and if you smoke cigarettes and want to quit, the Suffolk County health department and Peconic Bay Medical Center are offering help.
The “Learn To Be…Tobacco Free” program returns to Peconic Bay Medical Center in January. The seven-session series will be offered on Thursdays at 6 p.m. commencing Jan. 14 and continuing through March 10. The program is free to all. Smoking cessation medications are available at a nominal charge.
Participants learn more about the health effects of smoking cigarettes and get support — and medication assistance, if desired — to help them quit for good.
The program provides information about tobacco and tobacco additives — tobacco smoke contains a deadly mix of more than 7,000 chemicals, hundreds of which are toxic and about 70 of them are known to cause cancer — as well as nicotine addiction. The chemicals in cigarette smoke also effect those around you.
Breathing secondhand smoke from cigarettes is harmful to both children and adults. It increases the risk of lung cancer and heart attacks in adults and causes frequent lower respiratory illness, wheezing and coughing, more frequent and severe asthma attacks and ear infections in children.
“Breaking an addiction to nicotine can be very difficult,” Suffolk County Health Commissioner Dr. James Tomarken said in a press release. “Recent studies have shown that smokers who try to quit smoking using a combination of behavioral support and medicine are three times more likely to be successful than those who try to stop smoking without support.”
All sessions will be held in the front lobby resource room at Peconic Bay Medical Center, 1300 Roanoke Avenue, Riverhead.
For information about upcoming “Learn to be…Tobacco Free” programs in other locations in Suffolk, click here.
