Tobacco Awareness Month starts Thursday

November is Tobacco Awareness Month.  The Winneshiek County Board on Monday signed a proclamation for the observance.

Helping Services staffers Tessa Willie and Jen Kimber visited with supervisors to discuss the dangers of smoking.  Nearly 38 million Americans still smoke cigarettes, and smoking remains the single largest preventable cause of death and illness in the world. Smoking causes more than 480,000 deaths every year, or about 1 in 5 deaths. And more than 16 million Americans live with a smoking-related disease.

While the cigarette smoking rate has dropped significantly, from 42 percent in 1965 to less than 15.5 percent in 2016, the gains have been inconsistent. Some groups of Americans suffer disproportionately from smoking-related cancer and other diseases, including those who have less education, those who live below the poverty level and those who suffer from serious psychological distress, as well as members of certain racial and ethnic groups, and lesbians, gays and bisexuals.