90 Years of Helping People...and More to Come! By Phil Berbig Recently, we at Breathe Freedom from Nicotine received an unexpected phone call from Harold Gifford. Harold Gifford Mr. Gifford, a man in his 90’s, had made up his mind he wanted to do whatever he could to help people...
seriously…now we need to worry about thirdhand smoke?!?!?
The whole concept of third hand smoke (THS) is relatively new. While the dangers of tobacco and have been known and studied for many, many decades, THS was only officially identified as a health hazard in 2006. But what is third hand smoke? Obviously, the person doing the smoking is...
we are so very proud of our 10,000!
10,000 is a big number that pops up a lot! Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes. In 1993, 10,000 Maniacs hit #3 on the Billboard charts with their album, “MTV Unplugged.” Although they stopped printing $10,000 bills in 1969, there are currently 336 still in circulation. In Chinese, Japanese,...
and you though phillip morris was only selling cigarettes…a brief history of tobacco in America
In a 2019 TEDx Talk, Mitch Zeller, director of the Center for Tobacco Products at the FDA, takes us on an informative and fascinating walk through some of the history and statistics of smoking. Zeller begins by pointing out that tobacco is responsible for more deaths every year than alcohol,...
non-smokers finally get their break time!
I used to work in a building with 28 floors. My office was ground level, and I had a perfect view of the elevators and the entry. On the top floor was a company with several smokers. About 7 times per day, I’d see a group from the 28th floor...
how much do you smoke…when you don’t smoke?
How much do you smoke by simply breathing? Depending on where you live, the amount of “smoking” you do varies. After reading a study that equated air pollution to number of cigarettes smoked, two developers created an app that will tell you how many cigarettes you are inhaling in your...
because schools don’t have enough problems already…now they have to deal with JUULing!
An article titled, “JUUL is Biggest Contributor to Vaping Problem in Nation’s Schools” was published in the September issue of “High School Today.” It was written by Michael Nitti, superintendent of the Ewing Public Schools in Ewing, New Jersey, where he recounts the success he saw with quit smoking programs...
as the plots thicken on new tv shows…so does the smoke!
A recent study by Truth Initiative, a non-profit organization devoted to making tobacco a thing of the past, found extensive increases in the depiction of tobacco on popular TV shows. Many of those programs are targeted at young adults age 15 to 24. While the study is focused mostly on...
what can you say to a loved one to get them to quit smoking, chewing or vaping?
A few days ago, a friend, distressed about her father’s 40-year tobacco habit, reached out to me. She wants him to quit once and for all; while his health is still good. Her question was, “How can I talk to him about quitting. I want him to stop but he...
with trillions created every year; cigarette butts are a hazard to our environment!
About 65% of smokers simply dispose of their spent cigarette butts by dropping them on the ground. When you consider that every year roughly five trillion (yes, I said trillion) cigarette butts are created; that’s a lot of butts being abandoned on sidewalks, left waiting for the next rainstorm to...