Preventing Illness and Promoting Wellness for Communities in Eastern Connecticut

  • Andover
  • Ashford
  • Bolton
  • Chaplin
  • Columbia
  • Coventry
  • Mansfield
  • Scotland
  • Tolland
  • Willington

EHHD is helping workplaces go Tobacco Free!

 

The Goal: Tobacco free campuses (workplaces) promote a safe and healthy environment for everyone who works on or visits any of a town's/organization's campuses. As a town or organization, you want to protect people from exposure, create healthier communities and create social norms where the public expects tobacco free environments.

  • Tobacco free policies help establish the community norm that tobacco use is not a safe behavior for young people or adults

  • Evidence has shown that the use of smokeless tobacco products, such as chewing tobacco, snuff and snus, also create adverse health effects and can result in oral cancer, increased risk of heart attack, and contribute to cardiovascular disease

  • It is estimated that only 15% of cigarette smoke gets inhaled by the smoker. The remaining 85% lingers in the air for everyone to breath.

  • Studies are now showing that “third-hand smoke” (tobacco residue from cigarettes, cigars, and other tobacco products that linger in the air) is extremely dangerous.  In Connecticut 400 nonsmokers die each year due to exposure to tobacco smoke.

  • According to the Connecticut Dept. of Public Health’s office of Tobacco Use Prevention and Control, model policies and ordinances do not include exemptions for any type of tobacco products, person or event. 

  • Tobacco-free policies reduce tobacco litter. Cigarette butts and tobacco-related items make up 38% of all litter, creating costly clean up. With tobacco free policies, clean-up costs decrease.

Prohibiting ALL tobacco products helps reduce the susceptibility of youth and young adults getting addicted to tobacco products by encouraging healthy social norms:

    • Prevention is critical: if young people don’t start using tobacco by age 26, they likely will never start