Algoma Public Health wants more northerners to butt out

Morning North6:13Health officials in Sault Ste. Marie pledging to lower local smoking rates

Butting out! Sault Ste. Marie health officials are pledging to lowering local smoking rate by 5 percent over the next 5 years. We heard more from Janet Allen, a public health nurse with the Algoma Health Unit.

Public health officials in one part of northern Ontario are resolving to get people to quit smoking.

The Algoma health unit has pledged to cut the number of smokers by 5 per cent over the next five years.

That may not sound like a lot but for public health nurse Janet Allen, those are daunting numbers.

"That is a significant undertaking, but we are optimistic."

The population of smokers in Sault Ste. Marie and surrounding area has been steady at 21 per cent for a decade now.

Like the rest of northern Ontario, that is significantly higher than the provincial rate of 16 per cent.

Allen said their goal is to motivate smokers, and "to encourage people to make quit attempts and those that have made quit attempts in the past to keep trying."

Tobacco policy expert Robert Schwartz said there are many theories as to why northerners smoke more than those in the south.

But the executive director of the Ontario tobacco research unit said no one has attempted a made-in-the-north solution, until now.

"And I think that's what is happening in Algoma, because this is grassroots. It's from the bottom up," he said.

"What I see in Algoma is something I haven't seen anywhere else. It isn't the province coming in or the federal government coming in and saying 'Thou shalt must do X, Y and Z'."

The health unit is still drawing up its specific plan, but included in the conversation are family doctors, as well as major employers in the area.