Woodstock
First Nation Smoking Cessation Program
Knowledge Is Power
EN-WE-OW-LE-TENEH
10 Turtle Lane • Woodstock First Nation, NB • E7M 3B4 • Telephone Number: 325-3570
First Nation History & Ceremonial Use of Tobacco • Attention People Who Furnished Tobacco Products To Minors • Woodstock First Nation Message to Teenagers • Kick the Habit with NATURE'S HELP • Smoking Helpline • Manual/Workbook Tobacco: A Cultural Approach To Addiction And Recovery For Aboriginal Youth (anyone can use it) • Attention Chewers • Links
First
Nation History & Ceremonial Use of Tobacco
Ironically, the most spiritually powerful plant is tobacco, modern society’s substance of greatest abuse. For Native people, tobacco is sacred a plant of prayer, placed on earth to help us communicate with the spiritual world.
Our ancestors have used sacred tobacco for thousands of years. Tobacco has grown on the North American continent for at least the last 8000 years.
With research you will discover there are several varieties of tobacco known in the world.
The two primary kinds to be aware of are: nicotiana rustica and nicotiana tabacum. Nicotiana rustica is the variety used by Native people in the Americas. Commercial tobacco is nicotiana tabacum which was originally grown in South and Central America but was cultivated in the US for cigarette companies.
Tobacco - The Medicine
Tobacco was used for healing various aliments & conditions by our elder from the past.
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Asthma
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Bowel complaints
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chills
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Fever
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Convulsions
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Nervous aliments
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Toothaches
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Sore eyes
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Skin diseases
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Urinary aliments
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Earaches
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Snake bites
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Cuts and burns
“Tobacco was seen by our people as a gift form the Creator which would enable us to communicate with him. We were given tobacco because it affected the way we were able to think. It would give us an immediate feeling of heightened awareness because the tobacco we inhaled was that strong. We were given knowledge to fashion a pipe with which we could take very small puffs of tobacco smoke. We would only take small puffs, and then we would immediately blow out the smoke because smoke was not meant to be taken into our body and held there. The smoke needed to leave us in order to rise to the Creator with our prayers and thoughts. If we held it in our body, it would be an unnatural presence there. Immediately after taking the puff of smoke, our minds would race, and our whole body would be affected by this smoke since tobacco is a very powerful medicine. It has a specific purpose which must not be abused.” - Elder Danny Musqua.
The Sacred Pipe & Offerings
Tobacco is smoked in the sacred pipe. Some tribes will use a blend of tobacco with other medicines in their pipe. The tobacco smoke does not need to be inhaled.
Tobacco does not have to be smoked in ceremony, tobacco can be offered to the earth or fire. Tobacco is offered to Elders, healers or others as a sign of respect.
There are many traditional ways to use tobacco, each nation has their own teachings and protocol. If you seek further knowledge or guidance speak with an Elder or cultural advisor and offer tobacco for their teachings.
Attention
People Who Furnished Tobacco Products To Minors
If you think you are doing our youth a favor by buying them tobacco product; you are also buying them the following things:
· Coronary heart disease (eg, heart attacks)
· Peripheral vascular disease (circulatory problems)
· Aortic aneurysm
· High cholesterol (LDL)
· Lung cancer
· Cancer of the mouth, throat and voice box
· Cancer of the pancreas
· Cancer of the kidney, and urinary bladder
· Premature aging of the skin
· Stroke (Ask Krista Wright about it!!!)
Etc...
Please if you care about the youth in our community say “NO” to buying tobacco products to anyone under 19 years of age.
Woodstock
First Nation Message To Teenagers
Kick
The Habit With NATURE'S HELP
By James A. Duke, Ph.D.
My son and daughter complained so bitterly about my smoking 30 years ago, I quit cold turkey. One day I was smoking some three packs a day of unfiltered, king-sized cigarettes, and the next day, none. I still have dreams occasionally in which I give in to the temptation to light up again, but that will never happen in reality.
Quitting For Good Reason
Smoking is estimated to cause one-third of all cancer deaths and one-fourth of the fatal heart attacks in the United States. The American Lung Association estimates 350,000 Americans die every year form diseases related to smoking. (My own estimate is closer to 500,000.) Forty percent of smokers die before they reach retirement age.
All the talk about premature death goes over the heads of teen-agers who start smoking and the young adults who won’t quit. The hazards of smoking just seem to far off to them.
That’s why I like to remind young smokers I know that the habit strikes men in the penis and women in the face. That’s right. Smoking damages the blood vessels that supply the penis, so men who smoke have an increased risk of impotence. Smoking damages the capillaries in women’s faces, which is why women smokers develop wrinkles years before nonsmokers. (Male smokers develop wrinkles prematurely, too but somehow this particular antismoking argument seems to score more points with women than with men.)
Green Pharmacy to Quit Smoking
Years ago, when I kicked the cigarette habit, I didn’t know much about herbal medicine. If I were quitting today, I’d use some herbs to help.
Licorice (Glyeyrrhiza glabra). I don’t have much science here, just a gut belief to back licorice as an antismoking aid. I’ve also heard a lot of positive stories about people kicking the habit with the help of licorice.
How does this work? Licorice root happens to look just like an old cheroot cigarette. You can keep a stick of licorice root handy and suck on it in place of a cigarette. I believe it works by helping to satisfy the oral cravings people who are addicted to cigarettes seem to have. If were still a smoker, I’d give this a try.
It’s interesting that most licorice coming to the United States goes into tobacco products—chewing tobacco and pipe tobacco-presumably for flavor.
You should be aware that while licorice and its extracts are safe for normal use in moderate amounts—the equivalent of up to about three cups of tea a day—longterm use (more than six weeks) or ingestion of excessive amounts can produce headache, lethargy, sodium and water retention, excessive loss of potassium and high blood pressure.
Red clover (Trifolium pratense). A few years back I got a call from an entrepreneur looking for a source of red clover. He wanted literally tons to use as a major ingredient in a tobacco-free chewing tobacco product he planned to market, all tinned up just like the real thing.
I got this call around the time I learned why red clover has an age-old reputation as a cancer preventer. For tumors to grow, they need a blood supply. They send out biochemical signals that coax the body into growing blood vessels right into them, a process called angiogenesis.
Several leading cancer researchers have been working on ways to stop these new blood vessels from forming, thereby starving tumors. It turns out one compound with an anti-angiogenic effect is genistein, a constituent of red clover.
So, I welcomed the call from the man seeking red clover. By replacing chewing tobacco with a nontobacco substitute, he was working to prevent the mouth and tongue cancer chewing tobacco causes. And by replacing tobacco with red clover, he was unwittingly providing anti-angiogenic benefits as well.
I don't know what became of the man’s tobacco-free red clover chew, but I have a tin of red clover-based snuff. Aspiring ex-smokers can chew on fresh clover flowers (add them to salads) or other, more palatable herbs containing genistein, such as ground nuts, peanuts or soybeans. These munchies would help satisfy some of the oral needs smokers and ex-smokers seen to have. At the same time, the genistein in these snacks would be attacking any tumors that might be trying to get a start.
If you’re having a hard time kicking the habit, you might want to develop another habit—drinking red clover tea daily. It may offer a measure of protection.
Carrot (Daucus carota). Back when I quit smoking, carrots helped me quite a bit. I used to drive to the office munching on a raw carrot or two instead of puffing on a cigarette.
At the time, I chose carrots because I liked them, but now we know that carotenoids, the chemical relatives of vitamin A that prevent cancer—especially if the carotenoids come from carrots or other whole foods rather than from capsules. (Generally, if you isolate one beneficial chemical-take it out of context—you’re missing out on a whole lot of other chemistry that can also help you.) If cigarettes are cancer sticks, carrots are anticancer sticks. In fact, all fruits and vegetables are. The research is consistent and compelling. The more fruits and vegetables people eat, the less likely they are to develop any major cancer, including lung cancer. So even if you don’t quit smoking, you should still be munching on carrots.
Fava beans (Vicia faba). As one of the best dietary sources of I-dopa, converted to dopamine in the brain, fava beans might help alleviate your nicotine cravings. I came to this conclusion after Italian scientists showed that within the brain, the shell area of the nucleus accumbens, which plays an important role in emotions, is affected by dopamine. Dopamine is linked to the euphoria created by addictive drugs. Nicotine also boosts dopamine, leading Roy Wise of Concordia University, Montreal, to comment, “We should either downgrade heroin to habit-forming, or upgrade nicotine to addicting.”
Bupropion is an expensive drug, a dopamine-enhancer, which already has U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for use in programs to help people quit smoking. Fava beans and their cousins, velvet beans, might be cheaper, safer and more effective.
Turmeric (Curcuma long). West Coast herbalist Kathi Keville, co-author of Aromatheraph: A Complete Guide to healing Arts tells of chronic smokers who took turmeric daily as part of a research project at the National Institute of Nutrition in Hyderabad, India. Those who took turmeric eliminated three to eight times more carcinogens form their bodies as smokers who took no turmeric. Keville cited a Rutgers University study that speculated even small amounts of thyme, basil and turmeric can reduce one risk of cancer. If I were still a smoker, I’d be sure and eat plenty of curries, and some great basil pesto while I as at it.
Avoiding cigarettes and cigarette smoke in the first place is the first line of defense, so if you can quit you may be saving your own life and the lives you love. In the meantime, give your body a fighting chance with some of nature’s boosters.
Smoking
Helpline
click here or call 1-877-513-5333
Manual/Workbook
-Tobacco : A Cultural Approach To Addiction And Recovery For
Aboriginal Youth
If you would like to take a look at the Manual/Workbook click here (This is a PDF file so you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view this on your computer)
In order to use, download or print any PDF file you will need
to install Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is available
FREE of charge by visiting the following link...
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
Attention
Chewers
A bit of information . Did you know that non smoking tobacco ie. Chewing tobacco packs as big of a punch as cigarettes? They are as harmful and they carry as many chemicals as cigarettes do. So if you think chewing is safer than smoking. It is NOT!!! Please… take care of yourself quit chewing!
Links
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/sgr/sgr_2004/sgranimation/flash/index.html