Health Department Keen On Helping Parents With Smoking Problems

Addictions are undeniably bad. Drugs, cigarettes and alcohol are harmful in numerous ways. Tobacco addicts not only damage themselves but also those around them.

Parent's addiction to smoking not only harms them but it also affects their children more. Parents are strictly advised to overcome their addictions so as to keep their children safe and healthy. 

Smoking in pregnancy is even worse. Women tend to relieve their prenatal stress by smoking cigarettes. According to various studies, this practice leads to numerous developmental disorders in babies that last throughout their lives. 

According to News-Journal Online, an initiative was launched by the Florida Department of Health, to help mothers overcome their smoking habits at Daytona Beach in Volusia County. The Baby & Me Tobacco Free Program has helped husband and wife, Johnny and Holly Gregory, to quit smoking.

Now, the couple is proud parents of the first tobacco-free baby. The little baby girl named Root was born in October.

Currently, 16 expecting women have enrolled in the program and 12 have already quit smoking. That's commendable progress but administrator DOH-Volusia, Patricia Boswell stated that the number of women who smoke during their pregnancy has doubled in the last twenty years in Volusia County. Therefore, a program was necessary to help them get rid of smoking for good.

Mothers who stay away from cigarettes during pregnancy and stay smoke-free even afterward are given incentives by the program in the form of diaper money for one year. Additional vouchers are given to them if their spouses quit smoking. A part of the program includes sessions in which parental advice is given by volunteer private institutes.

WLRN also celebrated the birth of the first tobacco-free baby. Root's parents shared their content by saying that they are happy that their daughter will live in a tobacco-free healthy environment. Meanwhile, DOH-Volusia is planning to start a second program site in Edgewater, after the successful response in Daytona Beach Program.