Alaska Native groups join forces to fight tobacco use

Alaska Native anti-tobacco crusaders received unanimous support from the board of the state’s largest Native organization last year. Now, with that support of the Alaska Federation of Natives, they’re trying to cut into the state’s high rate of tobacco use by Alaska Natives by persuading individual tribes to stop their employees from smoking at work. They’ve been particularly successful in the Interior, where the Tanana Chiefs Conference — a nonprofit corporation serving 42 Interior villages — resolved to ban tobacco products on tribal government facilities this year.

“We want to protect workers and children from secondhand smoke but also from seeing it as a social norm,” said Gary Ferguson, the wellness and prevention director for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. He has been a vocal anti-tobacco advocate. “In the Interior, we have very resistant rates of tobacco use, and having an organization like TCC make a stand for its facilities basically sets the stage,” he said.

A majority of the state’s population is already protected from workplace secondhand smoke if you factor in municipal bans like those in Anchorage and Nome as well as employers that have made workplaces smoke-free, according to Andrea Thomas, tobacco department manager for the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium. Because there are so many tribal governments in the state, it is difficult to know how many have established policies like that of TCC, but at least seven have passed resolutions in support of smoke-free workplaces this year, she said. The Native Village of Nenana passed such a resolution.

Native anti-smoking advocates point to “Tobacco in the Great Land,” a 200-page report on tobacco use commissioned by the state government as a potent argument for fighting tobacco use. According the most recent report, in 2008 it’s estimated that 43 percent of Alaskan Native adults smoked cigarettes based on self-reported surveys. The estimated number of non-Native adults who smoked was 19 percent.

Both rates are higher in Bush communities than in cities and have declined during the past 10 years. The report overwhelmingly identifies tobacco as the leading cause of preventable disease in the state and directly responsible for $500 million annually in direct medical expenditures and lost productivity because of tobacco-related deaths. Read more: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner - Alaska Native groups join forces to fight tobacco use