Nechi to target smoking

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Maggie Hodgson is quitting smoking.

This will be "about the 50th time," the executive director of the Nechi Institute

has tried to quit, but Hodgson says this time will be different. This time she has her usual resolve, but she also has another, perhaps stronger incentive.

Hodgson has just been signed on as a member of Health and Welfare Canada's advisory committee on Aboriginals and Tobacco Use which will seek the ways and means to help Natives quit smoking.

The time has come, says Hodgson, to "walk my talk."

Hodgson will be one of many who have been invited to sit on the national committee whose recommendations may lead to radical smoking cessation programs

at Nechi and similar institutions.

Other invitees to the advisory committee include representatives from the Assembly of First Nations, the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, the National Native Women's Association, the Indian and Inuit Nurses of Canada, the National Indian and Inuit CHR Organization, and the Medical Services Branch of Health and Welfare Canada.

The committee will meet twice in 1993, with the first meeting slated for mid-January.

It's come just in time, says Hodgson. Many Natives are sober after years of addiction to alcohol, and now it's time they looked at their tobacco abuse.

A recent study done at Poundmaker's/Nechi showed many Natives began smoking at the same age they began drinking, often as young as age 12. Hodgson says smoking becomes a cross-addiction which is taken up even more strongly when the alcoholic is in recovery. And tobacco abuse is more common among Natives, Hodgson attests, because they smoke to counter the stresses of racism and discrimination.

"Not long ago it was common to sit in a room blue with smoke at all Native events," Hodgson says. That is slowly changing.

Some Native institutions have recently implemented smoking restrictions, including Nechi Institute this year.

Hodgson says Poundmaker's/Nechi smoking restrictions were set in spite of much opposition from clients and staff. In fact, she attributes Nechi's slow start in smoking cessation programs to the fact that most Nechi/Pounsmaker's staff smoke and tend to minimize the injury caused by tobacco smoke.

Some Natives defend their tobacco use with the response that tobacco is sacred

in Native culture.

But Hodgson says this abuse is far from the traditional use in sacred ceremonies which lasts about 20 minutes.

"You don't do ceremonies 40 times a day," she says, referring to some Native smokers who consume up to four packs a day. "There is a difference between use and mis-use."

Hodgson says she draws a parallel between tobacco abuse and its sacred use

with the taste of wine in church ceremonies: The use of wine in the practising Christian's sacrament does not justify his or her alcoholism.

Hodgson is unable to give any start dates, but she says Nechi will soon include smoking-cessation information in the curriculum used to train community alcohol abuse counsellors.

Ultimately, Nechi will have a smoking cessation program for those who come

to Poundmaker's for alcohol treatment and finally a smoking cessation program of its

own modelled on the alcohol treatment program.