The Challenge of Kicking a Bad Habit
BY JOHN CUTTER

Sylvia Pérez remembers what happened when her mother found a pack of cigarettes in her school bag. Even now, she almost can taste it. “My mother made me eat five cigarettes,” says Mrs. Pérez, who lives in Tampa, not far from the Ybor City neighborhood that was once the epicenter of America's cigar industry. “It was disgusting.”

The stomach-churning lesson did not make her stop smoking. Now, more than 35 years later, Pérez, 49, has finally decided to quit smoking.

Experts noticed a disturbing trend in the 1990s: Smoking rates among Hispanic high school students soared more than 29 percent after years of decline.

Now, one prominent researcher is suggesting that people like Pérez have a special role to play in helping turn around the recent increase. "Because of the respect for the elders in the Hispanic culture, parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts, even close family friends who are like uncles and aunts can be role models for younger people," says Dr. Lourdes Báezconde-Garbanati, director of the Hispanic/Latino Tobacco Education Network at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. "They can show the way by quitting smoking, or if they smoke, by not smoking around the children or grandchildren."

Concern for her son is one reason that Pérez is trying to stop smoking. In fact, it was her son Manny, 22, who drove her to a smoking cessation class at the James A. Haley VA Medical Center in Tampa. "He bugs me all the time. 'Mommy, why do you smoke?' 'Mommy, you should quit,' " says Pérez, who spent 13 years in the Army and now is caregiver for her mother and father. "I decided it was time. I've had trouble breathing lately."

‘Within 20 minutes of a person's last cigarette, blood pressure and pulse rate decrease. And even within a day, the risk of a heart attack decreases’

Years of smoking can lead to numerous complications, including decreased lung capacity, decreased sense of taste and smell, high blood pressure, and increased risk for heart disease and cancer. But it is never too late to reap some benefits from quitting smoking, says Dr. Carolyn Schlede, an assistant professor at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa and director of the smoking cessation program at the Haley VA Medical Center.

"Even people who quit after age 65 can potentially add two or three years to their lives," says Schlede, who also supervises other smoking cessation programs in southern states and in Puerto Rico. "Of course, it is better to quit sooner, or not start at all, but we see changes within hours of quitting smoking." Within 20 minutes of a person's last cigarette, blood pressure and pulse rate decrease. Within 8 hours, the carbon monoxide level in the blood returns to normal and the oxygen level increases. And even within a day, the risk of a heart attack decreases.

According to Schlede, the heavy marketing of cigarettes to Hispanics helps explain the recent increase in smoking among Hispanic adolescents, who took up smoking in higher numbers during the 1990s than in the previous two decades.

information
Latino Council on Alcohol and Tobacco American Lung Association or 800-LUNGUSA.

From 1977 to 1989, cigarette smoking among Hispanic high school seniors fell from 35.7 percent to 20.6 percent, but it increased to 27.3 percent in 1999, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 19 percent of Hispanics 18 and older smoke, which is a lower rate than non-Hispanic whites (25 percent) and African Americans (24.7 percent). The percentages drop as people age, often falling to 10 percent or less, usually because smokers die at younger ages or they give up smoking at the early signs of lung or heart disease.

Pérez says she doesn't want to wait until she has a health crisis to stop smoking. "It is hard right now. I loved to smoke," She says. "But the other day someone told me I smell nice, and that made me feel good."

 

 

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