Episode Transcript
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Special announcement. I wanted to let everyone know there is a drug take back that will be happening in Greenville on Saturday, April 27 at McAllister Square from ten to two. So if you have a pile of prescriptions that you, you stop taking, you don't use anymore. This is your perfect opportunity to turn them in with the rest of the community. You don't want to flush them because they end up in our water system. And so you don't want to just throw them in the trash because you have no idea. So join us at McAllister Square, Saturday, April 27, from ten to two. And any of your extra prescription drugs, bring them. You can bring them in the bottles, it doesn't matter. Just bring them and turn them in so we can collect them. And that way we will incinerate them and they will be gone. So hope to see you there. Thanks and good morning. Welcome back to just say something's weekly podcast. This is Philip Clark with you again. I'm the CEO executive director here at just say something.
And we have a really, really fun and great guest with us today.
As many of you know, we also work in local communities, local municipalities, to get them to adopt smoke free and vape free ordinances for their community, all protecting our health from secondhand smoke and third hand smoke. And because you don't have to be a smoker for it to bother you.
And so we have a champion in our guests today. And Darth, welcome to just say something.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: Good morning, Phil. It's a pleasure to be here with you.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Well, we're happy to have you. So before we get started about some of our work in Greer, tell us about Doris. Who is Doris?
[00:02:26] Speaker B: Oh, my. Well, I'm a retired older lady who has lived in South Carolina only eleven years. We love it here. And when you're retired, one of the joys is getting to do the things you want to do in your own time. And so I'm a retired public school administrator, a principal, but that doesn't make me mean nasty. I love my job.
But when it was over and my husband's job brought us here to South Carolina, I said, well, I didn't know a soul. Got to make the best of it. So we sought out a couple of things, a couple of groups. One of them was the American Cancer Society, because I had been involved in the relay for life up north, where we're from in northern New York. And surprise, surprise, became a survivor myself in 2007 when I had breast cancer and so got involved, started a relay for life team, and that led to volunteering with what's called the Road to Recovery program. So that's a wonderful program. We need volunteers, by the way.
At your convenience, you can find that people need rides for their cancer treatments and you can sign up to give them rides. So that was a good thing. All of this to say that, that puts me in the just say something universe, I think.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And with your background in education, as we talk more and more about tobacco, alcohol, drugs and how that affects our kids at school, you, I'm sure you've seen firsthand some of the issues that students and families can have. And so that's one of the reasons that just say something has been doing prevention and awareness and education for the entire community since 1984. So this is our 40th anniversary this year, and so our work never stops.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Indeed, it must not ever stop until there's not one family, one child affected by drugs, alcohol and all the problems that that brings.
You know, as a school principal, I got to know a lot of families and you, not everybody knows what goes on behind closed doors, but when you have to deal with a child that's impacted by what's going on in that household, so anyway, you bring your passion to it like you do, I think, right here at this organization.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: Well, thank you. Thank you for that. So part of our smoke free ordinance work is we do it under the larger umbrella of air preserve. And so right now we have a, we're building a larger campaign in Greer because Greer does not have a smoke free or vape ordinance that protects the workers and the citizens in downtown Greer. And so tell our audience how you, I don't want to say stumbled upon, but how you, because you almost did, how you came to be involved in air preserve.
[00:06:14] Speaker B: Honestly, I think I did stumble into the wrong meeting. It turned out to be the right meeting.
The next thing I know, I'm learning about your efforts and the coalition, which I'm all about coalitions and people working together and organizations working together to get the job done. So what I want to say is when you're wanting to convince people to change, go in armed with facts, stories.
And so I learned about the coalition. I was invited to take part in some meetings, and then the suggestion was made, Doris, if we're going to get Greer on board, we need to go directly to the city council. And would you do that? Would you talk to them? Why? Why Greer? That sits between Greenville and Spartanburg, much larger cities that have already adopted smoke free ordinances.
Just ask them why not Greer? And so I said yes to that. And I did it in November.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: And you did an amazing job. Actually, you did such a good job. We posted the video, I mean, the audio on our airpreserve.org website. So for those of you that want to see Doris testify to greer city council about why not Greer, go to airpreserve.org and it'll be posted there. So why is a smoke free greer important to you?
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Well, for the same reasons.
Having a healthy community and because you want people there who want to be there because it's a good place to live and they can go to restaurants and they can walk their streets and go to their city parks and feel safe. And it's a very worthy cause. And I'm not sure I totally understand why it's taking so long.
And it is as difficult as it is. But you know what? I was thinking about it and I decided to be positive and say, let's not forget how far we've come. Wow. The city of Greenville, in fact, Greenville and Spartanburg are just two of, I don't them know many, many cities across. See, I don't have my facts, but I should across South Carolina that have adopted smoke. I'll tell you, at the end of my presentation at the city council, I was heartened when people clapped. I mean, the public there who didn't know what I was going to talk about clapped. And when I wrote my thank you notes to the city councilman and the mayor, I said that had to be assigned to you, that there's support for this.
And I got three, four letters back from them saying, yeah, but.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Yeah, but we hear that a lot.
So you talk to us about the, you're talking to city council.
Air preserve just sponsored an event with the Greer chamber. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I think you attended with some of our other coalition members.
[00:10:05] Speaker B: I did. And that was a really fun night.
Kind of a surprise that it wasn't held in Greer. Where did we go? Taylor's, but a great venue there. And we had a table and we had what I think is the best way to capture because it worked for me as a kid, the imagination and the attention of young people, of all people. We had a demonstration of a healthy lung and right beside it, a smokers lung, that visual. And then to see how they don't function, because this demonstration, you could pump up the lungs. Smoker's black lung just doesn't pump up so well. And so people came by, kids came by wide eyed. And that was great fun.
One thing that happened for me because the table next to us was Prisma health and who happened to be there, of all the doctors there are in the area and in Prisma, but my own GP. And I say to doctor Cameron that she saved my life because two years ago I had this pain in the left side of my chest. I ignored it for a couple of months. I was seeing her and I said, you know, they've got this thing, I don't know, probably a muscle. Anyway, bless her heart, she sent me for various tests and a year later I had a lobe of my lung removed because it was cancer. And I say that because I wasn't a smoker, was I around my aunt Jane, who never stopped smoking, one after another. So was it the second hand smoke? Was it something else? But now I'm even more committed to this work.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: So many of us have personal stories like that.
I know even for myself in our neighborhood growing up, if our parents couldn't find us, and I was the youngest of four, they knew I was at Mister Hester's house.
Cause at Mister Hester's house you always got a butterfinger candy bar and the orange crush and so. But Mister Hester also smoked one cigarette after another for his entire working career.
He quit smoking the day he retired and then before too much longer, cancer. And then he was gone because of all those years of smoking. And I feel fortunate that, that I didn't have any side effects from that. But it depends on the person. What affects one person doesn't affect another person. So we all have to be careful with what we're doing.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Absolutely. I just want to add this.
In schools, as a teacher and a principal, kids would ask me, Misses McClellan, you smoke? Did you ever smoke? And I would say to them, well yeah, but I quit when I was eleven, I tried it. You tell kids that you're human, you understand there's an attraction. And then I get a stern face and say, and I'm so glad I never did again. And don't you?
[00:13:45] Speaker A: Good deal. We need more adults saying that to our kids, especially with the vapes.
That could be another podcast.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: It could.
[00:13:55] Speaker A: So you've talked coalition for Greer, who are some of the other partners that are included in that?
Let's see, so we have American Heart association, we have American Cancer Society, we have american lung and smoke free. Yeah. Our friends at smoke free South Carolina and then our friends at Dhec.
[00:14:22] Speaker B: At DHEC, that really impressed me. And there's, evidently DHAC has a designation to communities and if you're a designated smoke free community, DHEC provides stickers for businesses can put right in their windows.
Phil, could you talk a little bit about what happens in a community that's smoke free? Because when I said this to a business owner recently that we were working on this, she said there are still places you can smoke in public.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: So some of our. Sure. So some of our initial working career is we did surveys of the businesses downtown, and it was eye opening because of several of them. A lot of them were like, doesn't Greer have a policy?
So most people think that because Greenville has one and Greenville City has one and Greenville, Spartanburg City has one, that they're included in that. And so they're not.
It's where most of our restaurants are smoke free. It's choice, you know, and one of the biggest obstacles when we did smoke free in Greenville is especially with the restaurants and the bars, oh, we're going to lose money. We're going to lose money. People aren't going to want to come downtown. Guess what? Sales increased.
Table 301 has provided us some with information and support because their sales went up when Greenville went smoke free. So if there's any restaurant owners out there, going smoke free will not hurt your business. It'll grow your business. And so we need to make sure that we keep, they keep that in mind.
[00:16:28] Speaker B: That's a great message, I think, to get out to everyone.
I think of the restaurant workers, and yes, they're working maybe in a smoke free restaurant, but when they go out back for a break, and that's the case in Greer, there are back alleys with those back doors. You don't want to go in that way. And so if you're a non smoking server, but you've got to go out there, and that's the only place you have for your 15 minutes or 20 minutes, I'm thinking of those young people. Well, they're not all young people, but. Yes.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. You know, it goes back to a lot of parents, too. They're like, well, my child would never do that.
And then one of the things I like to ask at that time is, well, how many of you think that one of your child's friends would do that? And they're like, oh, and they probably think that one or two, and then I go back and say, so let me ask again. How many of you think that your little darling would pick up a cigarette or a canopy or whatever makes them think just a little bit more?
So as we're growing what we're trying to do in Greer, if there's anyone out there from Greer that would love to get involved with this with Doris and our other coalition members and to volunteer, all you have to do is go to airpreserve.org and on there is a contact form.
So fill that out.
And by doing that, we will also list you as a supporter of a smoke free Greer. And real quick, last year at the oyster roast that we did for the chamber, we surveyed the people that were there. And I think it was like 96% of the people that were there supported a smoke free, vape free greer. And so for all you people that are listening to this, if you're one of those people, you need to reach out to your city council member and educate them and advocate to them for a healthier greer.
[00:18:58] Speaker B: Absolutely, Phil. And today when I arrived to have this conversation with you, you and Wendy Hill provided me with these new stickers. And since we're on camera, too, but they're huge, they're pink. And they say, why not Greer and get in touch. We'll send you your very own pig sticker, won't we?
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely. We would love to have pink stickers all over Greer. And if you've looked at the Greer citizen in the last few weeks, you've probably seen some of our ads there to help educate the community.
And so there are some of the cities as part of the ad. So Blacksburg, Chesney, Clemson, Duncan, Easley, Greenville. And so Greer is missing as part of that list. There are other cities in South Carolina that have ordinances, but we kind of lag behind here in the state. And so we're trying to, trying to catch up. And if you live in Malden or Fountain inn or travelers rest and would like to do something like this, we're open to that, too, because we want to come your way. Our goal is to have an entire smoke free Greenville county, and we would be, I think, the second county in the state of South Carolina that would be 100% smoke free. And so it's going to take all of us.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: It is. It is. And it's heartening to when the medical establishment jumps in on this. And there was an op ed by Doctor Michael Humenek.
Honestly, he made the case as well as anybody could make op ed and the Greer citizen. So we're using our media and we're using our boots on the ground and we're using our voices. And I appreciate all you do and your organization hear it. Just say something.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: Well, thank you. We appreciate that. As we bring this to a close, is there any special thing, any special message that you would like to share with the listeners out there, maybe a statistic or something along that line, just any little nugget that you may have as it relates to smoke free greer.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: Well, I guess I would just use these numbers.
Each year in the United States, secondhand smoke causes nearly 42,000 deaths.
[00:21:45] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:21:45] Speaker B: I don't mean to end on a down note, but that's the reality. And those aren't just statistics. Those are our grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles, moms and dads.
[00:22:00] Speaker A: Right.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: And we can do better.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'll add a few numbers to what you have here in the state of South Carolina. I know your numbers were national, but here in the state of South Carolina, we spend, because of tobacco, we spend another 2.1 billion, that's with a b dollars every year on additional health care.
And then there's another 2.3 billion that cost us in lost productivity because of tobacco.
So for our elected officials everywhere, your community is paying for it. So help support us cutting that back and stopping that because just, that's a, again, that number just astounds me. It's a b, billions, not millions, not thousands, billions. And so people don't realize what it's costing us. It's costing us more than lives.
And I believe the last number I heard was tobacco cost every household in South Carolina $1100 a year.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: So that's, we have work to do.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: We do.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: Well, Miss Doris, I appreciate you being here with us today.
I believe we have another coalition meeting next week. And so if you want to be involved or included in that, be sure to go to airpreserve.org and sign up as part of the contact list. And then we will let you know and keep you included on our schedule of different meetings and opportunities to better educate our community about smoke and vape free. So again, thank you for being here with us. And this is another episode of just say somethings Weekly podcast. Again, my name is Philip Clark, and thank you for being here with us today and look forward to seeing you next time. Have a great day.
