Welcome, everybody, to Midday Magazine for this Thursday, February 6, 2025.
Have your host, James J. Mailoff here.
At 4.30 today, we're going to welcome in our friend from UW Extension, Matt Lippert.
We're going to talk agriculture with Matt in just a little bit.
Right now we have in the studio with us some of our favorite people.
We have the Wood County Health Department.
First, we have Christy Eggy with us.
She is the supervisor of strategic initiatives.
Christy, always good to see you.
Thanks for being here.
Absolutely.
Thanks for having me.
And Alyssa, Galen?
Yes, that's correct.
I got it right in the pan right that down.
I got the last name right.
Alyssa is a community health worker over there.
Alyssa, good to have you with us.
Thanks for being here.
Thanks, you too.
I want to say right away to you all and to our audience.
We love our Wood County Health Department.
Greatly appreciate everything you all do for our community,
keeping us healthy and safe and informed.
Greatly appreciate that.
I want to get into a topic today that is certainly noteworthy.
And it really has been for a long time, Christy.
And we're going to talk a bit about tobacco and vaping here.
And Wood County.
Yeah, absolutely.
And it isn't, like you said, it isn't a new topic.
It's something that we've been dealing with in our communities
and communities across the nation for years.
And we know more and more about the true health risks
associated with nicotine, tobacco use.
And there's a lot yet that we need to learn and understand
about the risks of vaping, which we're
continuing to see arise in the use of.
There's a few things that really jar me anymore.
At this age and the things I've seen and stuff,
it takes a little bit to rattle me.
I will say that the rise of vaping and a lot of that
has really gotten does that to me a little.
In part because of that latter part,
you said there, Christy, about the unknown.
With nicotine, I'm not taking that lightly by any means
or anything, but I've seen a lot of the work
we've done on that topic.
When we were kids, you walk into the gas station,
and there's 19,000 different brands of cigarettes
and everything.
And that has been narrowed down to like five.
A method, a menthol cigarettes and stuff,
or things like that being off the market,
where we've seen a really good, like,
some great progress made in that regard.
And then there's the other side of it with vaping,
where it feels like all of that good work just went right
into vaping.
And the danger there, again, of the unknown, where nicotine,
there is still certainly good science being done to find out
more and more of the impact of that.
But we have a pretty good idea of the impact of that.
It's bad for you.
Turns out those doctors in the 1940s and 50s
might have been wrong, those 9 out of 5.
The one guy might have been right the whole time.
And with that topic, with this topic,
I think one of the things that happens often
is there is so much information.
So what I appreciate today is with having both of you here,
and those brains of yours, and also
being able to kind of break this down with people.
So if you don't mind, can we start with local health concerns?
Absolutely.
So like I said, tobacco use and vaping
are significant health issues in Wood County,
in here in Wisconsin Rapids.
And they impact individuals health and well-being
and also health care costs.
So we know that ultimately, there's a ripple effect, right?
If we health behaviors, oftentimes
equate to poor health outcomes, which
equate to people needing to seek health care.
And we know that vaping has become increasingly
popular, especially among young people.
So I think in our world, prevention is really important.
And prevention is across the lifespan.
But when we see young people more and more vaping
and because of the flavored products that are marketed
and that are included in vape products,
it really, when we don't know the health risks,
it's very troublesome.
And we know they're being studied.
But there's a lot of playbook.
The playbook of the tobacco industry
that the vaping industry is currently using, which, again,
from a public health perspective,
has us quite concerned.
And we care about prevention because we
believe that preventing the initiation of tobacco
and vaping products helps protect future generations
from those long-term health, consequences
and long-term health impacts.
And unfortunately, the products are,
they have addictive properties and the chemicals in them.
So the chemicals in these products are addictive.
And so if someone tries them or uses them a couple of times,
essentially, you start to, and especially depending
upon people's different makeup in their bodies,
you end up having a substance, a chemical substance
addiction within your body.
And it's just really unfortunate, especially
for our children.
Well, Seth, and very well noted.
One of the things that I think you touched on there
is the marketing part of this and the addiction part
of this, that these companies are very aware of,
know what they're doing.
They're very good at their job and doing that.
And everybody out there understands business 101.
And they do this to make a bigger profit.
I'm curious, Christy, how much money does the wood
kind of help department get for every person
that quit smoking?
Oh, wait, nothing, right?
Not again.
There's no profit gain.
You guys have no advantage for this.
You are strictly coming out with this information
to help people.
And this is another part of the issue with this.
And other things in life and stuff often times.
It's not enough anymore that we just get information.
But people immediately have this follow-up question,
well, who's in their pocket or who's
getting an advantage here?
There is none.
They just care about people's health.
They're just looking to help people here.
There is no side story or anything like that.
That is, I feel like that should be common knowledge,
but it is something that I think is not worthy.
When we're talking about this,
when we're talking about a health department
and a conglomerate and businesses and the differences there,
what about the health impact in Wisconsin of this, Christy?
Yes, we do have some great data from a state level.
Harder to drill that down, but we know
that there's nearly 8,000 deaths annually in Wisconsin
that are attributed to smoking-related diseases.
Smoking and using tobacco products
impacts heart disease.
It impacts a lot of cancers and diabetes.
I mean, the list goes on and on and on.
Almost every kind of condition you can imagine.
And we know that these illnesses cost the state
over $4 billion in health care.
Someone is paying for something down the road,
whether that be your insurance company
or the cost of medications
that you're taking, like you said,
we're not benefiting from this at all at the local level
in the sense of getting people to stop,
but we also understand the burden on health care
and the cost that a four individuals
to receive health care.
There is a cost with everything, right?
So it choices that we make.
We have seen incredible strides in reducing smoking rates.
So when you look back 50 years ago
and what we know today, it's really notable,
but we know that there's more work to be done
because even if we have 10% of the county smoking
that's still 10% that we would hope would not
based on what we know about the health outcomes.
When it comes to the awareness part of this
that that part helps with bringing these things up
and talking about these topics,
one of the things that you brought up though,
the four billion in health care costs.
I do this especially with a lot of our nonprofits
and we're talking about different subjects.
I like to certainly speak to people's hearts and souls
and hope that they're hearing us there,
but oftentimes if they don't hear us on that,
they'll hear us when we're talking about their wallet.
They'll hear us when we're talking about that.
And one of the bigger topics in all of our lives,
whole lives has been health care and the cost of it
and the lack of it for certain people
into individuals in our communities.
I'm not saying that this changes that.
We get rid of this, there's four billion dollars
that's gonna go, I'm not that naive,
but I do know that some of that money
would certainly impact and make things better
in our rural areas and so many of our communities
where we really do need these funds
to be going towards just keeping people healthier
and so many other levels.
One of the part of this too,
and I'll bring this up in two parts.
And one, I am extremely familiar with addiction.
I've been very honest on the airwaves with my family,
my father struggles with it.
I smoked for a long time too.
I went out a long time, but I smoked for a while too
and stopped smoking as well.
So I'm very familiar with addiction.
I literally grew up with it and seen it at its worst,
my whole life.
There's not saying there's a gigantic difference,
unfortunately, but there is a difference
between addiction of cigarettes and nicotine
and addiction of heroin and that's what I grew up around.
I've seen this at its worst.
So much of that can be helped and worked with support
and with understanding and I'm not telling everybody
that you need to use kid gloves with this topic necessarily,
but you know your audience and you know your people
and the one thing that we do know that doesn't get a lot
of people to come around on this subject or what have you
is shaming and kind of talking down to people in that.
I think that our society has done some great work
with knocking out cigarettes and the availability
and so much of this working with the youth on it and everything.
But I think we also kind of hold ourselves back
a little bit with some of the way we approach this topic.
Not to say you guys or the health department,
you guys are approaching this fantastically
and I really do mean that.
But I do know that on a societal level sometimes we do this
where we shame each other on these things
and nobody really went, nobody grows from shame.
Very few people grow from that.
They may hopefully take account of their actions
but addiction is something,
Christie talked on this right away.
They are literally putting chemicals in here
that they know are going to change the map of your brain.
We have no problem seeing somebody with a cast
and be like, oh, what happened to you?
Oh, let me sign that.
When the cast is in the brain,
we just kind of like, well, that's on them.
They don't have enough willpower.
This isn't about willpower.
This isn't about those things.
It took forever for me to learn that
because I just felt, well, if my father could beat heroin,
I could beat nicotine.
Come on, I'm built of the same stuff he is.
I could do this.
No, no spoiler alert.
Didn't go well.
It took me a lot longer.
It took me a while to be able to do that
because I just didn't realize that this is,
I'm not saying that there is an accountability.
There needs to be accountability
but there also needs to be your own personal accountability
of, oh, this is out of my hands.
This is a chemical thing in my brain
that I need help fixing and making right.
So I want to talk a little bit
about a nicotine addiction with you, Christie,
and kind of about this topic.
And covering some of what,
hopefully I didn't take all your talking points.
But I do think that it's noteworthy subject.
It really is, James.
I mean, honestly, that's one of the things
that we, in public health, we've talked about that a lot.
In stigma, there's stigma associated with so many things
around people's health, right?
So mental health and substance use.
And we know that, like you said,
manufacturers of these products have known for a long time
that there are addictive properties.
That's their whole goal.
Their whole goal is to start you young,
start at nine years old, start at 10 years old,
and then they have a lifelong customer, right?
And unfortunately, as a society,
and I do think that you said we've made
a lot of strides of improvement in this as well,
but putting the onus back on person,
the person itself, and not looking at the whole picture
about what it truly means to have a substance,
the same with opiates, right?
Like we know that these manufacturers knew
for a long time that there were addictive properties.
And while there is a place in the medical system
for people to have pain management,
it should have been well documented and shared
that there was the potential for folks to become reliant
on the substance.
And so it's the same with nicotine, right?
Which nicotine is in tobacco products
and it's in vaping products.
And yeah, it's so much bigger than just being able to say,
I'm gonna stop today.
And if I can't stop, it's a personal problem
or it's a character flaw, that is not the case at all.
And we know that vaping is sort of taking this side
of, well, vaping is better for you than tobacco, right?
Because there's other chemicals in tobacco products.
But so we were hearing that many youth are thinking,
well, vaping is a better option.
It's less harmful than smoking,
but we still believe that it poses significant health risks.
And we're seeing that play out,
we're seeing youth being hospitalized
with issues with their lungs
who are heavily vaping,
even youth that aren't vaping heavily.
But we know that there is lung damage.
We know that you have that side of the potential
to be have addiction, be addicted to the substances,
and then also just those long-term health impacts.
So.
Are there other things you want to touch on
as far as the health risks of tobacco use and vaping?
I touched mostly on them already,
really just like they'll link to a lot of chronic conditions.
Folks have heard these over and over and over.
They impact a lot of our families.
But every single family is impacted by cancer.
I don't know a family that's not impacted by cancer.
And we know, I mean, there are a lot of things
that cause cancer.
There's a lot of things we don't know yet,
that probably cause that we're gonna find out
in the years to come.
But tobacco, nicotine is something that we know for sure.
Causes cancer, heart disease.
COPD, like being able to breathe every day,
we take for granted.
And when you can't breathe without oxygen,
it's a big deal.
So we also know secondhand smoke is harmful,
and that isn't, that is not being shared
in a way to shame somebody that potentially has,
is using a substance and smoking,
but we want them to know it can harm your children
to be using substances around your children.
And that there's increased risk for those children
around respiratory, their respiratory health as well.
And then similar with vaping, like I talked about,
the lung challenges that we're finding,
we've seen e-cigarettes are vaping linked to lung injury.
And there's been hundreds of cases of reports across the US,
including in Wisconsin, where children have been hospitalized
and had to be put on, and had to be watched medically
or be watched by physicians.
And like I said, there's just a lot that we're still learning
about a lot of these new products.
Yeah.
Christy, thank you so much.
Great information, great stuff as always.
At least I wanted to talk with you a little bit,
and I really want to note this as well.
If we stopped our interview right there,
this has been a great interview,
and I really do appreciate things.
The thing that I just commend so much about our health department,
our local wood kind of health department,
is that's not enough for you guys.
You also want to give people the other side of this
and the idea of how to prevent these things,
how it supports systems, some of that,
which is so key to this topic,
and I really do appreciate that.
And at least you have some great information for us
about some local initiatives that are going on.
What do you have for us?
Yeah, so we do a lot of stuff with what we call
the patch program, which is providers
and teens communicating for health.
And within that program, we are working with the schools
and along with community partners.
And so we have been working on doing presentations
to the community families and students
about the prevention of vaping
and what it does to their bodies.
Are you hearing things from kids as far as this topic
and why they're doing it or what's bringing them to it
or anything?
I know we kind of touched on that a little bit,
but just specifically from the kids,
are you hearing or seeing anything?
Is this a real concern with them?
It is.
I hear a lot of them talking about the mental health aspect
of it and what they're dealing with within their schools
and with their peers on how they are seeing what the vaping
is doing to their mental health
and how it's declining rapidly.
I see that there's some other local initiatives
and things going on.
There's a Wisconsin tobacco quit line
that is available for people as well.
Yes, that is just a phone number that you can call
which is 1,800 quit now.
It's a great resource, a great ability,
especially having something like that available
because it isn't as if addiction only happens nine to five
or something like that.
There are certainly times of the day
when different things pop up or whatever,
having kind of a accountability buddy
or a support person right there available.
That's a really good resource.
And that number again is 1,800 quit now.
There's also education programs going on in the schools.
There is.
So we have been working with the schools
on implementing alternative to suspension programming
with us within the schools
and they are working on those currently.
Which is encouraging to hear.
That's again, great ground work being built.
And like most things, this stuff takes time.
It takes us to have patients with society
to build these kind of things up.
But what I like to think of is taking a step back
into the big picture and 10, 20 years from now
how this subject might be different.
And we're having this conversation.
And hopefully it's a little bit different
in many regards because we're building this from the youth.
We're building this at a young age.
Rapping up here a little bit,
a call to action about prevention, about awareness,
really focusing on how we can do that.
These are both of you, Christy, at least.
I'll open this to both of you.
Yeah, absolutely.
It really starts with conversations and support.
And encourage one of the things that we like to say
is talk to your kiddos, talk to your family members.
Don't be afraid to talk about it.
Don't be afraid to talk about the dangers of tobacco use,
the dangers of vaping and nicotine.
Kids are listening, adults listen to,
and they listen to their friends.
I mean, honestly peers and having the conversation
and having them know, hey, I'm here for you
if you need something.
And here's what vaping can do to you.
Here's what tobacco using tobacco products can do for you.
Kids, it's small talks.
It's small conversations around the dinner table.
It's really important.
And honestly, for folks who are passionate about this
or for folks who have been impacted by this,
supporting your local and state policies
that restrict the sale and marketing of tobacco
and vaping products, especially the miners is really important.
You go into a gas station, you see,
one of the things that has always struck me
is the placement of products and how, you know,
things are placed, you know, strategically, right?
Where children can see them, they're bright,
they're colorful, they look like candy or they look,
you know, speak up.
I mean, say something.
You know, you have a voice in your local community
and you can say something like,
this is bothering me because it is being marketed
to my children and they may not do something right away,
but the more people that say something,
the more they're gonna realize.
This isn't what people want to see.
This isn't what people want to see when they frequent my store.
They, you know, so, yeah, I mean,
you have a role to play.
You can be an advocate and speak up.
So those are a couple of things.
Great notes.
And it's a great note that every great revolution,
every great change started with one person.
Started a grassroots usually, one person,
and it builds from there.
And if you do say something,
if you do see things in your community
that you think are hurting our kids
or something like that,
I, not only speaking up and doing that,
but finding others that feel similar to you
and building on that
and seeing the good work that you can do from it and everything.
And I think as well,
so many of the other things we have covered today too
are so encouraging to hear about the future of this.
You know, when we all see ads on TV and movies
and YouTube and that,
where it's this, this, you know,
pill or something and it does this.
And then we're all used to side effects may include.
And there's all these other big things on there.
If cigarette companies had to do that,
the 32nd commercial would be,
20 seconds would be spent on the side effects.
Yeah.
They wouldn't even have time to promote their product.
It speaks to this.
When you ask, when I,
when I talk to my parents when they used to smoke
or people would ask me why I smoked and everything,
oh, it's a release.
Okay, or what else you got?
I like having bad breath.
There is no, there's no positives to this.
It's the weirdest product to think of.
When you think of like, well, what,
well, I know what sells these cookies.
It's they taste good or I know what sells this.
But this has no positive to it.
No genuine, you really learn something right away
when somebody can't tell you what a product, what you do.
Like you ever ask somebody what they do for a living
or something like, well, I, okay, they didn't tell me anything.
This product is like that.
This product has no true positive to it.
All it has is negatives and that's key to keep in mind.
And I know for me,
one of the things that got me to stop was,
first and foremost, you know, having kids
and wanting to be there for them and my grandkids
and stuff like that.
I also got tired of making rich people richer.
I got tired of that.
I got tired of being a slave to something.
There's so many factors that it can be
for other people out there and maybe some of that.
But at the end of the day,
it has to come down to you wanting to do this for you.
And that's where it begins.
You can do it for other people.
I had to con myself into it
because I'm not gonna do one things for myself.
But eventually you have to start there.
And when you do,
you have such a support system waiting for you.
You have such a group of people,
a community, an area that is behind this
and really wants to see you succeed at this.
Encourage you to reach out for more information
and more help.
Kristia, people want to do that
and want to follow up on some of this.
How can they reach you?
Yeah, they can get in touch with us.
They can call our health department 715-421-8911.
And they are,
phone 19 get you connected with folks,
if you have questions,
want more information about smoking cessation
or more information about the data we shared today.
But we also have information on our website.
So on the Wood County Health Department website,
if you Google that, it comes up right away.
We also have great information
on healthy people with county.
And when we have our patch program linked on those sites as well.
Yeah, and at least they can find
that same information there as well, right?
Yes, that's correct.
Both of you, thank you so much for the time.
Please say hi to the staff for us.
You guys take care of these safe out there.
We'll talk again real soon.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We'll have more midday magazine coming up
for you right here in 975 FM 1320 AM WFHR locally grown radio.
