Tobacco Is No Longer Tolerated at Valley City Parks

On the heels of a state wide smoking ban in public places, a North Dakota city is taking it one step further. Tobacco use is now against the law in city parks and several other city-owned areas in Valley City. Valley News team's Eric Crest clears the air on where smoking is, and is not, allowed in the city.
It wasn't long ago that the state of North Dakota decided it was time to embrace a new smoking ordinance.
"I loved it I absolutely loved it," says, Heather Hildebrant of Bismark.
The state wide ordinance kept cigarettes out of businesses and the approach to their entrances.
"I can bring my son outside and go anywhere and not worry about people smoking outside of buildings or inside of them anymore," adds Hildebrant. Cigaronne cigarettes .
Recently Valley City took it one step further. A handful of city property will be tobacco free now too.
"They can't smoke in any park owned property, any activity arenas outside, in any of our buildings," explains Dick Gulmon the President of the Park and Recreation Board for Valley City.
That includes playgrounds, spectator areas, athletic fields, concession areas, and even parking lots on nearly all of the cities property.
"It's our responsibility in managing the parks and recreation programming to set an example of a healthy lifestyle," says Gulmon.
"It drives me insane. They're not only effecting their body they're taking the choice away from everyone else around them that don't want it in their system," adds Hildebrant.
The Tobacco Prevention Coordinator in Valley City says by eliminating all tobacco use in public parks in town their not just reversing the normalization of tobacco use, but they're also impacting generations to come.
"I think it's the effect on the youth. I think promoting that healthy lifestyle and not seeing cigarette butts in the parks, and (not to mention) what that can do to the environment. But promoting that for the youth and setting that example," says Gulmon.
Because as the state and cities alike continue taking steps like these, it's the youth, that will reap the benefits.
"It's their choice I guess. What they want to do with their body. But it just bugs me when they do it around other people cause then we're stuck with the consequence of their choices," says Hildebrant.
Not all public parks in Valley City are tobacco free just yet. The local Tourist Park Campground and Bjornson's Public Golf Course did not end up on the list. The park board mentioned that out of concern for a loss of business to neighboring communities, they made an exception.

Vt. says time for addicts to quit smoking, too

Cigarettes and alcohol addiction are so strongly linked there's a running joke among those trying to quit, says T.K. Blanchard, who's been sober for a year and smoke-free for eight months.
"The joke is that when you see a lot of people smoking outside a church, you know where the (Alcoholics Anonymous) meeting is," the Montpelier 24-year-old says.
Now the state Department of Health wants to put into place a tobacco-free policy at state-funded addiction treatment centers. It's a policy that dozens of other states have already adopted. Vermont plans to put the policy into place July 1. Galaxy cigarettes.
Barbara Cimaglio, deputy health commissioner in charge of Vermont's alcohol and drug abuse prevention program, said the department can set the policy because it licenses the facilities and because the state's Medicaid program provides about 70 percent of the centers' funding.
She said tobacco is one of the biggest burdens of the population of people with addiction or mental illness. And "people say, 'Oh gosh, this poor guy is giving up alcohol and drugs — you expect him to give up cigarettes, too?' Yet we know from a health perspective, this is the thing to do."
At Another Way, a peer-support center where recovering addicts and former psychiatric patients gather, people getting ready for a meeting Tuesday offered a range of perspectives.
Blanchard was among them. He said he spent 50-days at a residential treatment center, Valley Vista in Bradford, last year, and wasn't ready during his stay there to give up tobacco. "That was the last thing I had ... It was a comfort," he said.
But four months into sobriety after leaving the center, he quit cigarettes, too. "The techniques I had learned for staying sober from drugs and alcohol made me ready when I decided to quit smoking," he said.
Others were skeptical, the new policy can work.
"That's going to be a rough one," said Ed Woods, 50. "AA, cigarettes, coffee — they kind of go hand-in-hand."
At the Brattleboro Retreat, a private psychiatric hospital that takes some of its patients under contract with the state, Kurt White, director of ambulatory services, said tobacco use was "vastly more prevalent" among people with substance abuse and mental health problems than among the general population. He said the Retreat has had a smoke-free campus for several years, but will offer nicotine patches to inpatients who arrive with a cigarette habit.
"There's a growing body of evidence that people do better with both their addictions and smoking cessation if they quit everything at once," White said. Often there are "paired associations," he said. "That drink of alcohol might have gone with a cigarette. The cigarette might have been a cue to drinking."
Cimaglio cited hospitals and newsrooms as among the places where smoking once was part of the culture but no longer is.
"This is sort of the last place where we haven't changed the culture," she said of mental health and substance abuse programs. "And there's really no reason we shouldn't do better."