Georgia Regional Going Smoke & Tobacco Free

(Savannah) Breathing smoke free.  A change is coming to the 7 Georgia Regional Hospital campuses, including Savannah.  “We really want to promote good healthy living for them,“ says Haley Moreland.  The decision to ban employee smoking at the mental health facility follows a order handed down to clients a few years ago.  Smoker Chon Jernigan watched her mom and dad die of lung cancer.  She has no choice now but to quit.  “I feel like if I just waited until lunchtime and drove off campus somewhere and smoked I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on my work and that’s very important to me.  This is more than my job - it’s my livelihood,” says Chon.  Smokers were encouraged during their lunch break Thursday to sign up for free smoking cessation classes.  “We wanted to help them as much as we could.  We didn’t want to put the rule out there and not give them some kind of aid,“ says Moreland.  Concerned about secondhand smoke and the health of her co-workers, Margaret Mellows is cheering the decision.  “Quite a few of them have bee ill due to smoking, and that bothers me that they have been ill.  Some have had heart attacks and various other illnesses, but yet they don’t seem to understand that smoking contributes to their decline,“ says Mellows.  The new smoking policy at Georgia Regional starts January 5th.