Be Well...Join the Great American Smokeout,
November 18, 2010

According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), the idea for the Great American Smokeout grew out of a 1974 event. Lynn R. Smith, editor of the Moticello Times in Minnesota, spearheaded the state's first D-Day, or Don't Smoke Day. The idea may have been inspired by Arthur P. Mullaney of Randolph, Massachusetts. Three years earlier, Mullaney asked people to give up cigarettes for a day and donate the money they would have spent on cigarettes to a high school scholarship fund.

The idea caught on, and on November 18, 1976, the California Division of the American Cancer Society successfully got nearly 1 million smokers to quit for the day. That California event marked the first Smokeout, and the Society took it nationwide in 1977.

Is this the year YOU quit?

Below are some American Cancer Society (ACS) resources to make it possible: