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On June 18, WCTEPP brought community partners together for a luncheon to brainstorm ideas on tobacco and nicotine education throughout Weld County. Visitors from the Colorado School of Public Health, Larimer County Public Health, University of Colorado Anschutz medical campus, and the Weld County Department of Public Health and Environment community health workers joined to explore ideas to support Master of Public Health students entering the workforce and discussed education services offered by WCTEPP, including in-school youth education, nicotine cessation support, and outreach services.
Welcome school year 2025-2026! This year, WCTEPP is selecting four schools to participate in our Tobacco-Free Schools Mini-Grant Program where schools will have the opportunity to earn up to $4,000 for establishing a Students Working Against Tobacco (S.W.A.T) Club throughout the school year. To participate, you must:
1) Be a Weld County middle or high school
2) Complete four required activities by the end of the school year
3) Meet one time per month with your S.W.A.T. Club
4) Meet one time every two months with your WCTEPP Grant Advisor
Apply today! Submit your application by Aug. 14, at 11:59 p.m. Chosen applicants will be notified the week of Aug. 25 through Aug. 29 via email with further steps and onboarding instructions.
For schools interested in implementing a tobacco-free culture in their school but aren't quite ready to implement a S.W.A.T. Club, the Tobacco-Free Schools Designation Program allows for flexibility and designation stages to support schools in their tobacco-free journey. Schools have the opportunity to earn up to $1,000 for becoming a tobacco-free campus.
For more information or clarification on both the Tobacco-Free Schools Mini-Grant Program and the Tobacco-Free Schools Designation Program, please contact Giovanna Castro, WCTEPP Youth Education and Prevention Specialist, at Gcastro@Weld.gov.
Check out the S.W.A.T. Club at Sandcreek High School in El Paso County.
Quitting smoking or using nicotine in any form is difficult. Most people try to quit “cold turkey” (which generally means without medications, on our own). Unfortunately quitting cold turkey is only effective about 5% of the time.
However, there are two ways to increase the chances of your being successful — behavior change counseling and the FDA-approved quit smoking medications. If you use both counseling and medications, you can increase your chances of success to about 30%.
Behavior change counseling isn’t laying on a couch talking about your childhood. It is talking about your routines that are related to smoking or your use of nicotine and how to change those habits before we even try to quit. When someone is going through nicotine withdrawal, they are not very good problem-solvers for changing all those nicotine habits. The three resources listed at the end of each newsletter, The Colorado Quitline for any adult, including pregnant adults; My Life, My Quit for teens; and Baby and Me Tobacco Free for pregnant people, all provide free behavior change counseling via text or phone call.
FDA-approved quit smoking medications can really help a person quit. You can take one, two or even three medications while trying to quit. Most people quit taking the medications too soon. The CDC now recommends that you can generally continue to take these medications for six months or even a year to help prevent a relapse.
- There are two that do not contain nicotine: varenicline (Chantix) and bupropion (Wellbutrin). These medications require prescriptions and should be started two weeks before your quit date or before you start to reduce the amount that you use, if your plan is to taper down on a schedule. Varenicline is the single most effective medication.
- There are three nicotine medications that do not require prescriptions: the nicotine patch, nicotine lozenge, and nicotine gum. If you enroll in The Colorado Quitline and qualify, you can receive one to two months of one or two nicotine medications in the mail free of charge, making it easier to combine counseling with medications. The nicotine patch is a great, easy medication to use.
- 99% of people who take the nicotine lozenge or gum do NOT read the instructions and do take them incorrectly which means they do not help with withdrawal symptoms, and do cause negative side effects, so please read the instructions. They don’t work to help with cravings because lozenges and the gum take 20 to 30 minutes to get fully into the blood supply and a craving lasts less than 5 minutes, so the nicotine lozenge or gum should be taken on a schedule throughout the day to prevent cravings.
Example scenario: If I wanted to quit, had tried to quit without succeeding in the past, smoked 10 or more cigarettes per day, had health insurance including Medicaid, had no preexisting conditions, was an adult, and was not pregnant, my ideal combination would be:
- Taking advantage of all five of my calls with Quitline counselors because they would be my cheerleaders when I had success, and when I hadn’t done well, they would provide suggestions about other ways to handle situations to help me get back on track (with no guilt tripping).
- Starting varenicline pills by prescription at least two weeks before trying to quit.
- The nicotine patch. Determining the dose should be based on number of cigarettes smoked per day.
- The mini nicotine lozenge on a schedule. Determining the number of lozenges to take per day (1 to 20 pieces) should be based on how difficult withdrawal symptoms feel.
Baby and Me Tobacco Free is a program that has conversations (behavioral change counseling) with pregnant women who are currently using nicotine or who have quit during the pregnancy or in the three months before becoming pregnant. The program offers financial incentives to participate.
This program is now beta testing expanding their services for pregnant women who use marijuana and/or tobacco. Enroll a willing pregnant person today.
The Environmental Protection Agency identifies hazardous wastes and classifies them based on their toxicity. Nicotine, the addictive chemical component of tobacco, is listed as a P-Waste – home to other highly hazardous chemicals in discarded commercial chemical products. Vapes and other nicotine products that are not appropriately disposed of expose our environment and community to dangerous pollution. For safe disposal of vape products and other vape components, check out the Weld County Household Hazardous Waste Program in Greeley and Dacono. Our Greeley Location is open Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and our Dacono facility is open Saturday, Wednesday and Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Reference: EPA. (2024). Defining hazardous waste: Listed, characteristic and mixed radiological wastes. United States Environmental Protection Agency. https://www.epa.gov/hw/defining-hazardous-waste-listed-characteristic-and-mixed-radiological-wastes#:~:text=The%20P%2Dlist%20identifies%20acute,at%2040%20CFR%20section%20261.33%20.
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