Truth Initiative joins "DC Calls It Quits Week"

Starting today Truth Initiative is joining the District of Columbia Department of Health and more than 40 local health care organizations, businesses and civic leaders to launch “DC Calls It Quits Week,” an awareness campaign about the importance of quitting smoking.

On Wednesday, Truth Initiative will partner with DC Teens Who Don’t, a youth anti-tobacco coalition, to distribute facts about menthol tobacco and quit cards to D.C. residents, just part of a weeklong effort to share information and resources about ways to quit smoking.

Smoking, the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the United States, kills 800 D.C. residents each year, according to the D.C. Department of Health. More than 16 percent of D.C. adults and 14 percent of high school students are smokers; more than 60 percent of adult smokers in the District have made an attempt to quit in the past year.

Smoking also takes an economic toll on the city. Smoking-related health care costs Washington, D.C. $391 million each year, while D.C. businesses lose an estimated $280.4 million in productivity each year to smoking.

DC Calls It Quits Week is part of Truth Initiative’s work fighting tobacco use in Washington, D.C. 

To help reduce tobacco use in the nation’s capital, Truth Initiative’s Good Neighbor Fund sponsors projects that encourage youth to reject tobacco. This summer, the Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at Truth Initiative secured two $30,000 grants from the Washington D.C. Metro Tobacco Research and Instruction Consortium for two pilot programs looking at tobacco use pattern in the city.