Smokeout Day: Feelings About Habit Run High

The 85 junior high school students were enthusiastically rapping the evils of cigarette smoking at a rally in front of the new Glendale Memorial Hospital Comprehensive Cancer Center.

With cheerleader verve, three young girls led the crowd in a rousing yell:

Starting right now,

we want you to see

that all cigarettes

are now history!

A few blocks away at the Tinder Box smoke shop, Rob Jones, a 30-year-old Burbank social worker, had just lovingly picked out a new 50-count box of Hoya de Monterey cigars.

“Most cigars are filled, but these are pure tobacco . . . $1.10 apiece,” he said as he carefully laid them down at the cash register.

All over town Thursday, variations of those scenes were being played out amid the fanfare of the American Cancer Society’s nationwide Great American Smokeout--a day when smokers were being encouraged to give up the habit for 24 hours.

No one is sure how many people did quit for the day, but American Cancer Society officials estimated that one in five went smokeless--or about half a million quitters in Los Angeles County and 10 million nationwide.

“People really do want to stop,” said American Cancer Society spokeswoman Becky Moore. “You can tell because every year the smokeout gets more popular. People are becoming more and more aware of the health problems to themselves and others.”

The 11th annual smokeout featured a variety of events locally to inspire would-be quitters.

At California State University, Northridge, fraternity members and Los Angeles Raiders drop-kicked cigarette packs through miniature goal posts. In East Los Angeles, joggers from 25 schools and corporations participated in a 31-mile Run for Life relay.

In Long Beach, firefighters hosted a Burgers for Butts party, serving free lunches to those who quit smoking for the day.

Throughout the county, friends and relatives participated in adopt-a-smoker programs, offering moral support and hiding cigarettes as needed. Babies born at some area hospitals were adorned in tiny T-shirts proclaiming, “I’m a born nonsmoker.” Almost all the events included speakers who emphasized that 136,000 American die annually of lung cancer and 214,000 more of smoking-related illnesses.

But many smokers were not about to be coerced, begged, scared or bribed into surrender so easily.

Molly Altadonna of Los Feliz, who has smoked for 24 years, was busy at a Glendale mall buying a large box of cigars for her husband.

Noting that she and her husband spend around $100 a month on cigars and cigarettes, she explained that she took to the habit naturally because her grandparents had grown tobacco on their farm in Greece.

“My grandfather smoked 200 cigarettes a day,” she said. “And my grandmother rolled every one of them for him. He lived to be 103.”

As she grasped the cigar box possessively to her chest, she added:

“All this smokeout stuff is silly. I mean there is asbestos in your ceiling, additives in foods, smog in the air, and you aren’t even supposed to have sex because of AIDS. Well, if you start worrying about everything, it would drive you crazy. Wouldn’t it?”

Meanwhile at Glendale Memorial Hospital, employees were celebrating the smokeout by serving tortillas filled with “cold turkey.”

“We have a lot to celebrate. We opened our new cancer center, which has a no-smoking program. And we instituted a no-smoking policy in the hospital,” explained Mildred Lee, hospital health educator.

As part of the day’s festivities, the hospital invited Roosevelt Junior High School students to an anti-smoking program.

School counselor Jackie Butler, wearing a “Kiss Me, I Don’t Smoke” button, was listening to her students ask questions about smoking.

“I need this too. In fact, all the encouragement I can get,” said 30-year-old Butler, who had smoked since she was 15. She gave up her 1 1/2-pack-a-day habit Sept. 30. Since then she has been doing aerobic dance and weightlifting to keep her mind off cigarettes.

“So far, it’s working. I can forget about cigarettes for a couple days at a time,” she said.

Most of the students interviewed said they had never tried cigarettes and had no intentions of ever doing so. But when one girl launched into the health reasons for not smoking, a friend interrupted. “You do too smoke! We are always trying to tell you it’s not cool,” she said.

The 14-year-old, looking sheepish, pleaded, “Well, don’t use my name. My mom and dad would kill me! Just say I used to smoke a long time ago when I was real little. OK?”