Garage much healthier thanks to Nicorette's effort

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Nobody likes a quitter right?

Wrong!

NASCAR has 350 quitters. Team members, crew chiefs, NASCAR officials, track workers and business types have all quit smoking within the last three years through a cessation program launched by Nicorette, one of NASCAR's sponsors.

The sport's smoke'em-if-you've-got'em mentality has disappeared in recent years. Drivers puffing on cancer sticks for the cameras are as passé as rules forbidding females in the garage or crew members wearing jeans on pit road.

Once R.J. Tobacco Company left the sport in 2003 so did free cigarettes handed out in media centers and fan infields. In today's NASCAR, you've got crew members slapping on nicotine patches and chewing nicotine-laced gum.

The sport is mimicking a nationwide trend where Americans simply want to live longer and healthier lives. Despite NASCAR's appreciation for its deeply rooted heritage in the tobacco industry, the sport's players are proving old dogs can learn new tricks.

Drivers no longer smoke two packs a day like David Pearson did decades ago much less smoke in the middle of a race.

Dick Trickle was widely known for having installed cigarette lighters in his racecars. NASCAR allowed Trickle to smoke in the car during yellow flag periods, and during the 1990 Winston 500 he was seen on live television lighting up and smoking a cigarette.

"I remember Dick Trickle ... you would roll around under caution get ready to take the green. I'd see him flick his cigarette out the window before we went to a green flag. Even that shocked us back then. If you saw it today it would really shock you," said Jeff Gordon, NASCAR's ambassador and face of Nicorette's Quit Crew program.

Realizing a need in the garage area and in the race shops, Nicorette began its quit smoking program in 2004. The Quit Crew provides tools to NASCAR team members through seminars and one-on-one counseling sessions. To date, 350 smokers from 19 different NASCAR related organizations have participated in the program.

Tim Smith, a 46-year-old who works in the Hendrick Motorsports engine department, used smokeless tobacco for 23 years and knew it was time to quit. The North Carolina native teamed with a friend at Yates Racing and went to a Nicorette meeting.

"This would've been about three years ago," Smith recalled. "After the meeting they gave us some product and in the beginning it was difficult. I had done it for so long. I did it from time I got up to the time I went to bed. Everything I did reminded me of it. I couldn't stop without help."

Smith has been smoke free since 2005.

"It's just one of those things you know, you have to quit," he said. "I think everyone is starting to pay more attention to that these days. You don't see people smoke nearly as often as you used to"

Rocky Ryan, spotter for Burton is another success story. He smoked cigarettes for nearly 20 years, but quit two years ago and is on a mission to have everyone on the spotter's stand that smoke join in.

The program also reaches out to the NASCAR fan.

At most tracks throughout the season, Nicorette provides certified smoking cessation counselors free of charge to fans. Since 2005, Nicorette has counseled an estimated 250,000 race fans on how to quit smoking.

"People in the garage have become healthier and more physically fit, and while I think all of us are grateful for our past and history and sponsors that helped us get here, its' a changing of the times," Gordon said. "Not just in our sport, but all sports and the entire country."

Jeff Burton remembers smoking indoors and outdoors.

"I think this garage is no different than everywhere else in the country," he said. "There are healthier decisions being made as opposed to 15 years ago. You see fewer hot dogs and hamburgers, more chicken and fish. And there are a whole lot fewer smokers, there's no question about that."

Steve Kapur, spokesman for Nicorette, a NASCAR sponsor since 2004, said the company is committed to help NASCAR and its fans until 2010.

"Around the United States smoking is down," he said. "We'd like to think we are a part of that."