Quitting smoking can be very hard. If you are thinking about quitting, check out RETHINK Tobacco Indiana at rethinktobaccoindiana.org.

Smoking and using any type of tobacco or nicotine product is harmful and habit forming. This includes cigarettes, e-cigarettes, cigars and chewing tobacco. About half of the people who smoke or use tobacco or nicotine products will die of smoking-related problems, according to a news release from Schneck Medical Center.

There are more than 7,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke. That means whether you are the smoker or spending time with a loved one while smoking, you are sharing harmful chemicals that lead to heart disease, stroke, breathing diseases such as asthma and COPD and diabetes, just to name a few.

Those numbers and diseases can sound so far away until you realize more than 7,000 Jackson County residents use tobacco or nicotine and the county has a 73% lung cancer rate. That is 20% higher than the state average for county-level lung cancer averages. Rethink what you are inhaling or exhaling into the lungs of your loved ones.

The longer you smoke, the more likely you will experience problems from smoking, including dying earlier. The less you smoke around your loved ones, the less likely they will experience a smoking-related early death.

For information about how to quit or reduce tobacco and nicotine use among county residents, contact Decreasing Tobacco Use Workgroup coordinator Tosha Cantrell-Bruce at [email protected].