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Recommendations for reducing tobacco use

For tobacco users

 

Quit

The sooner you quit, the sooner your body can begin to heal, and the less likely you are to get sick from tobacco use.

 

 

Get help

Ask a health care provider for help quitting and visit the Colorado QuitLine. The Colorado QuitLine website is available in English and Spanish and is a free service available to Colorado residents 12 and older. 

 

Quit guide

Smokefree.gov offers a step-by-step quit guide, a free quitSTART app, and free text messaging programs that give 24/7 encouragement, advice, and tips for becoming smokefree and being healthier.

For others

 

State and community leaders can:

  • Fund comprehensive tobacco control programs at CDC-recommended levels.
  • Enact 100 percent smoke-free indoor air policies that include workplaces, restaurants, and bars.
  • Increase the price of all tobacco and nicotine products.
  • Implement hard-hitting media campaigns that raise public awareness of the dangers of tobacco use, secondhand smoke, and vape exposure.
  • Use the World Health Organization's MPOWER strategies to prevent and reduce tobacco use and to make tobacco products less accessible, affordable, attractive and accepted:
    • M = Monitor tobacco use and prevention policies.
    • P = Protect people from tobacco smoke.
    • O = Offer help to quit.
    • W = Warn about the dangers of tobacco use.
    • E = Enforce restrictions on tobacco advertising.
    • R = Raise taxes on tobacco.
       

 

Parents and people who don’t smoke can:

  • Make your home and vehicles smoke and vape-free.
  • Not start, if you aren't already using tobacco.
  • Quit if you smoke or vape.
    • Children of parents who smoke are twice as likely to begin smoking.
  • Teach children about the health risks of smoking and vaping and secondhand smoke and vape.
  • Encourage friends, family, and co-workers to quit.
     

 

Health care providers can:

  • Ask their patients if they use tobacco or nicotine.
    • If they do, help them quit.
  • Refer patients interested in quitting to the Colorado QuitLine, smokefree.gov, or other resources.
  • Advise all patients to make their homes and vehicles 100 percent smoke and vape-free.
  • Advise individuals who don’t smoke to avoid secondhand smoke exposure.
     

 

Employers can:

  • Establish a policy banning the use of any tobacco product indoors or outdoors on company property by anyone at any time.
  • Provide all employees and their dependents with health insurance that covers support for quitting with little or no co-payment.
     

 

Retailers can:

  • Learn the new Food and Drug Administration restrictions on youth access to tobacco products and tobacco marketing to youth, and closely follow them.
  • Follow state laws.
    • Visit the Colorado Department of Revenue website to learn more.
  • Never sell any tobacco product to customers younger than 21. 
  • Check the photo ID of any customer trying to buy tobacco products who appears to be 26 or younger.