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If your New Years Resolution is to quit smoking, then this next report is for you and if you’re a nonsmoker… you should be concerned with how much money smokers are costing the state. As Whitney Ray tells us, there is free help for people trying to kick the habit, all paid for by the forced hand of the tobacco industry.

Tobacco Free Florida offers classes on kicking the habit, a 24 hour hotline for quitters who feel their willpower fading. There are even nicotine patches, all free of charge.

Shannon Hughes is the Bureau Chief of Tobacco Free Florida. The program is operated through the Department of Health and funded by the 1997 tobacco settlement.

“We receive 15 percent of tobacco settlement funds,” said Hughes.

This year the budget is 64 million dollars, which is small compared to the toll smoking takes on Florida’s economy.

According to the Department of Health, smoking costs 20 billion dollars a year in lost productivity and early deaths. There’s 1.2 billion dollars in Medicaid expenses alone.

“Tobacco illness and death takes a tremendous toll on our state’s economy and the health of people and so it works in favor of all of us to decrease, to reduce smoking as much as possible,” said Hughes.

Smokers flood the Tobacco Free Florida website and hotline every January looking for help with their New Years resolution. But statistics show for first time quitters, they’ll fail between eight and 11 times before they finally kick the habit.

and to get started with stopping visit tobaccofreeflorida.com or you can call the hotline at 1-877-U-CAN-NOW. Since the programs inception smoking is on the decline. Right now about 20 percent, or one in five Floridians, is a smoker.