What if you stopped smoking for 30 days? November is No Tobacco Month, a challenge for smokers who would like to quit smoking. Nearly 113,000 people are registered in France. This is the ninth year that this challenge has been organized. According to studies, it would have enabled 900,000 people to quit smoking in the country.
Angélique Dessaint, ninth edition of Tobacco-Free Month. Is it a good idea to quit smoking or do we finally start again on December 1st?
Of course, it is a very, very good idea to quit smoking, knowing that it also means challenging ourselves collectively to quit. It's not about doing it alone either. And then the idea is that this movement continues afterwards and that we stop smoking completely if possible. It's always easier to have him accompany you. And that's also why as part of this challenge, there is both the collective movement, but there is also the idea of meeting a health professional to be able to have the solutions most suited to you. So you can substitute and have as much information as possible before starting.
France has 12 million smokers and according to surveys, six out of ten want to quit. Patches, hypnosis, electronic cigarettes: to put it simply, what is effective and what is not for smokers who want to quit?
It is up to each person to find the solution that is most appropriate for them, also depending on their consumption: knowing whether they smoke out of habit or out of dependence and therefore being able to find these motivations. Today, there are several nicotine substitutes, whether gums, patches, lozenges, but also there is this movement on electronic cigarettes which can indeed be a good help in stopping smoking, but which we do not still consider today as nicotine substitutes.
Among the prevention measures, there are more and more tobacco-free spaces. How many are there in Calvados and where are they found?
We have more than forty municipalities which have signed the agreement with the League against Cancer in Calvados for the emergence of these spaces. And there are more than 600 tobacco-free spaces in the country. These are places where smoking is not normally permitted, places which are already normally subject to a smoking ban. But the idea of these spaces and this label is to also be able to display a reminder that smoking is prohibited in these spaces, spaces frequented by families and children. The idea is to denormalize smoking, avoid encouraging young people to start smoking and therefore, protect everyone.
Precisely, you intervene in schools from primary school, from a very young age. For what reasons?
We intervene from CM2 to talk about tobacco, the dangers of tobacco, but above all about self-esteem and psychosocial skills. Because there are other solutions. In the end, when we are, when we are having a bad period than falling into tobacco. And so the idea is to be able to inform the youngest because as soon as we enter sixth grade, we realize that there are children. The idea is to be able to protect them at this level. And then we work all year round, of course, because we are working on a 2032 first generation tobacco-free objective. This is the national objective.
Every year, 75,000 deaths are attributable to smoking in France. Tobacco, leading cause of preventable cancers.
