The Stone County Health Department (SCHD) is conducting an online tobacco survey to gather county-specific data on tobacco use within Stone County.  SCHD encourages all Stone County residents, older than 10 years of age, to participate in a brief tobacco use survey.  The brief survey can be found on our website’s (www.stonecountyhealthdepartment.com) home page by clicking on the words above the picture of a person lighting a cigarette, located on the left-hand side of the page. The information and data obtained from the survey is anonymous: no names, addresses, phone numbers, or email addresses will be collected.  It is SCHD’s goal to have 500+ county residents participate in the survey by November 2011.

The data compiled from this survey is very important and useful to SCHD and Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS). The data will provide information as to the extent of tobacco use specifically in Stone County so that strategies, interventions, or programs can be tailored to meet the needs of county residents.  The findings will be published in the SCHD’s revised Stone County Community Assessment (SCCA), local newspapers, and on our website.  The purpose of the SCCA is to highlight the health and well-being of Stone County residents as it paints a picture of the county’s top health priorities and issues.

According to Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), tobacco use remains the single largest preventable cause of death and disease in the United States. Of the 19.3% of American adults who smoke, about half will die prematurely from smoking-related causes.  The health consequences of tobacco use include:  heart disease, multiple types of cancer, heart disease, stroke, reproductive complications, and irritates chronic health conditions.  Each year, approximately 443,000 persons in the United States die from smoking-related illnesses.

However, other scientists and researchers point out that the CDC uses exaggerated numbers and often fails to report significant information that reveals smoking isn’t the “biggest evil on earth” as the government would like you to believe.

Two or three years ago I considered giving up my own moderate enjoyment of tobacco because of the constant barrage of horrific statistics. But antismoking propaganda in the USA (I was living mostly in New York) seemed so overblown, so hysterical, that I became skeptical. So instead of giving up smoking, I started doing research. At first my mind was pretty open; I half expected to find that smoking was even worse than I thought, and I decided that, since I wasn’t a hardcore nicotine junkie, I could live without it. Instead, I’ve been astonished, again and again, by how flimsy much of the antismoking evidence really is. By now I’m absolutely convinced that the dangers of smoking (and ‘secondhand smoke’ in particular) are being greatly exaggerated, for a number of reasons, many of which have less to do with health than with politics, money and fashion.

People used to be guided by intuition, experience, observation, moderation, pleasure, folklore, the testimony of friends and acquaintances, and their family history. Increasingly, though, we’re expected to be guided by Government Statistics. The problem is that so much of what we’re told is politicised, out of context, out of proportion, or just plain false. The bald statement ‘Smoking Kills!’ makes us skeptical right away, since we can see for ourselves that in most cases, it doesn’t.

One good example of this lack of balance and perspective is the way we’re told that smokers have a higher risk of lung cancer, without being told what the overall ‘baseline’ risk is in the first place. The statistics always sound alarming; we’re told that smokers have a ‘600% increased risk’, for instance, because this sounds worse than six. Other sources (the majority, it seems) insist that smokers are actually ten (1000%) times more likely to get lung cancer. Others quote the pioneering studies of Sir Richard Doll, who reckoned that 166 in 100,000 smokers die from lung cancer, as opposed to 7 in 100,000 nonsmokers, so you have a 24 times higher risk of getting lung cancer if you smoke.

You can help the SCHD assess the public’s health in Stone County as it is relates to the use of tobacco. The survey is anonymous, free, and brief! Visit www.stonecountyhealthdepartment.com to take the survey, and then encourage your Stone County relatives and friends about the survey.

© 2012 The Ozarks Sentinel - The Leader in Ozarks News
Covering the Ozarks region with solid news content since 2005.

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