[Editor’s Note: Well, not “every” time, I guess]

Would it surprise you to learn that nearly 70 percent of people who currently use tobacco want to quit? But by design, tobacco products are addictive, and quitting can be difficult for many people. The American Cancer Society’s Great American Smokeout, which is happening this week, will help motivate thousands of people across the country to make a plan to quit tobacco. As family, friends, and neighbors, we can support them with encouraging words and celebrations to mark their success. We can also support them by advocating for real changes in our community to make it easier for people to quit. Smoke-free laws, for example, de-normalize smoking, in addition to protecting people from secondhand smoke, which helps encourage adults to quit. Towns and states across the country have already passed laws to keep all workplaces, including bars, restaurants and casinos, smoke-free. This small change has been found to lower rates of community tobacco use and even help prevent kids from starting to use tobacco. Unfortunately we haven’t yet taken action to do the same here. Our community has the power to help people quit using tobacco and to keep our kids from using tobacco.

[Editor’s Note: I grew up in a heavy cigarette use environment. My parents both smoked, as did many of my aunts and uncles. We thought nothing of it. I distinctly remember “dancing” in the smoke with my sisters as it wafted into the sunbeams that would shine through my parents’ living room windows. I remember ashtrays being pretty much everywhere. I even remember my Mom sending me up to the store on my bicycle to get her a pack of cigarettes (and the cashier would ring me up, no questions asked). Smoking used to be everywhere. Shake Shack had a cigarette vending machine right next to the pinball machine! Many of my friends smoked. My sisters too. I thankfully only had one girlfriend back in the day who smoked. Fortunately, I never picked up the habit. None of my kids did either. I see statistics that say smoking is way down, and I hope that trend continues. With all that we know now, it boggles my mind that anyone would start smoking in this day and age. But in any event, I’m happy to share this, as I’ve seen what smoking can do to you and I would love to be even a small part of helping people kick the habit. If you’d like help, call 1-800-QUITNOW. And speaking of numbers … please note the new number for Text the Times. New number, same snarky responses!] Sarah Sanders is dancing a jig in the Governor’s office. She is celebrating the lack of transparency in Arkansas. She is ecstatic Arkansas voters did not get to decide on women’s rights in the recent election. She wants women to “Know your role” and “Stay in your lane”. She knows if voters get involved in women’s rights, women win every time.

J.D. Vance bad mouths and disrespects women without children and calls them childless cat ladies. He bad mouths and disrespects men without children calling them woefully inadequate. Sarah Sanders has also taken jabs at women who can’t have children. I hoped that enough men with wives, or girlfriends, or daughters, or women friends, or mothers would think twice about voting for a party who denigrates women and those who think like them, but I was wrong. [Editor’s Note: Hey, I was with you. I thought that, in a vacuum, a lot of the things that the GOP did along the way weren’t too terrible, but that once you added them up, there was no way they would perform as well at the polls as they did. I suppose it gives you an idea of what American voters were really looking for in their elected officials, and for better or for worse, the American people have made their choices]