Several years ago Fran Gallagher responded to a house call while working as an emergency medical technician in Hartford, Conn. The patient was having trouble breathing.
When Gallagher arrived, she saw a bare- and barrel-chested man with his oxygen mask dangling from his neck. His house reeked and the walls were yellow.
The man was also puffing on a cigarette.
“People with problems keep coming in until they go into respiratory arrest, and then they’ll die,” she said, recalling her parents’ last years battling with the common lung disease emphysema.
Having seen smoking’s fatal potential become reality both at home and at work, Gallagher is encouraged by data showing that the efforts against smoking in the state are discouraging smokers and reducing exposure to smoke.
Since North Carolina’s restaurant and bar smoking ban went into effect last January, air quality in restaurants and bars around the state improved by 89 percent, according to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services.
QuitlineNC has also seen a 35 percent jump in the number of participants as a direct result of the smoking ban, said Joyce Swetlick, the director of cessation in the department’s Tobacco Prevention and Control Branch.
QuitlineNC is a free call service for the state’s tobacco users to talk to quit coaches for encouragement and tips.
There were 9,840 callers in 2010, Swetlick said, a significant increase from the 5,860 callers in 2009.