“Quitting smoking is easy. I’ve done it hundreds of times,” Mark Twain once said.

    While Twain taps into many Americans’ frustrations of quitting smoking in the present day, Twain didn’t have a nationwide, community-based voluntary health organization to confront his lackadaisical attempts to quit smoking.

    On Thursday, the American Cancer Society challenges smokers to set a goal to quit with its annual Great American Smokeout.

    The Smokeout encourages smokers to make attainable goals and stick to them on a daily basis. It also asks smokers to reflect on why they smoke and what are their personal reasons to quit.

    Health concerns from minor ailments such as bad breath, coughing, and yellow fingers, to more serious ailments such as cancer, heart disease and respiratory diseases are cited as the top reasons to quit, according to the Society’s Web site.

    The Washington State Health Department lists several clinics to help smokers with their cessation. However, Lewis County smokers have another way to “tap into” their desire to quit.

    Awareness Hypnosis, a Chehalis-based business specializes in hypnotizing people for health-related issues, is offering a free session throughout the month of November for those who decide to participate in the Great American Smokeout and quit smoking.

    “I have had a lot of people come in who say they really, really, really want to quit, and we start the hypnosis sessions and find out there are parts of them that don’t want to quit,” said Rita Ballard, a consulting hypnotist and comfort therapist at Awareness Hypnosis.

    Hypnosis is a state of focused concentration and heightened awareness, according to the Awareness Hypnosis Web site.

    “Rather than come in and waste a lot of money, we first want to see if these people really want to quit,” she said. “There has to be some correlation between moving forward and wanting to quit that is non-threatening. We feel offering a free session is non-threatening.”

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Contacts in Lewis County to Help You Quit Smoking

Lewis County Sexual Assault & Domestic Violence Line

Human Response Network

748-6601

Washington Association of Community and Migrant Health Centers (WaCMHC) and Valley View Health Center

500 SE Washington Ave.

Chehalis, WA 98532

786-9722

Washington State Tobacco Quit Line

In English

1-800-QUIT-NOW

(1-800-784-8669)

In Spanish

1-877-2 NO FUME

(1-877-266-3863)

Quit Line hours:

Monday - Sunday: 5 a.m. to 9 p.m.

— Source: Washington State Department of Health Web site

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Need-to-Know Statistics About Tobacco Use:

    * Tobacco use remains the single largest preventable cause of disease and premature death in the U.S.

    * Cigarette smoking accounts for about 443,000 premature deaths — including 49,400 in nonsmokers in the U.S. every year.

    * Thirty percent of cancer deaths, including 87 percent of lung cancer deaths, can be attributed to tobacco.

    * Smoking accounts for $193 billion in health care expenditures and productivity losses per year.

    * Great progress is being made in reducing tobacco use in the U.S., with adult smoking rates in 2007 declining among all adults to 19.8 percent.

— Source: The American Cancer Society

    Carly Nairn: (360) 807-8235