Quit Smoking

Starting next week, though, the Central Ohio Breathing Association will offer a $ 45 six-class course taught by a nurse from Total Wellness Concepts. The hope is that the class will become a regular thing, and that scholarships eventually will be made available to low-income smokers, said Marie Collart, the association's president and CEO.The state's Tobacco Prevention Foundation was dismantled in 2008 and with it went funding that supported smoking-cessation classes statewide.

Then-Gov. Ted Strickland and lawmakers in 2008 took most of the money originally set aside for preventing smoking and used it for other things. The rest has either been spent or allocated for enforcement of the state's smoking ban.The Quit Line now serves pregnant women and the indigent, and its future is uncertain.Mari-jean Siehl, chief of the state's tobacco-use prevention and cessation program, said she has less than $ 320,000 to spend, most of which could be spent through September. The bill for the Quit Line is about $ 25,000 to $ 40,000 a month.Siehl said she's exploring ways to find more money to keep the Quit Line running.

"We do not know now, how long the remaining funds will continue, and we do not know (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) will have no additional funds for the state," she said.Siehl also working to get health plans and employers have signed the tobacco State the joint, which connects customers and employees of companies Quit Line.Programs in other countries, including those funded by the hospital, it becomes increasingly difficult to find, Collart said. "For those people who really want to quit smoking, it really is nowhere else to go." OhioHealth and the American Lung Association offers "Freedom from Smoking" class at Dublin Methodist hospitals and doctors for $ 25. Ohio State University College of dentistry offers a cessation clinic, the treatment costs $ 150.