BUFFALO, N.Y. — One of the most common New Year's resolutions is to stop using tobacco, but it can be a tough one to stick to. That's especially true for anyone who has been smoking for a long time.
"Cigarettes were $0.50 a pack in the store. Me and my older cousins were running around smoking and they were stealing their parents' (cigarettes), or I'd steal one or two from my parents," said former smoker Ron Austin. "I mean, we thought we were the biggest kids on the block."
It's been a long road and a lot of money for Austin.
"When they hit $0.75 a pack, I told her if they ever hit $1 a pack, I was going to quit," he told his mother decades ago. "Forty years later, when they're $10 or $12 a pack, I was still smoking them."
Austin comfortably guesses he's spent thousands of dollars a year on everything from packs and cartons to inhalers and medical bills. But it all leads to somewhere too many people have found themselves before.
"I woke up one morning, I was sitting on the side of the bed just coughing and hacking. I couldn't even catch my breath. I was coughing so bad," said Austin. "It was that day or the next day that I called the quitline."
"So we want to reduce cancer death by as much and as quickly as possible. Reducing tobacco use is the best way to do that," said Andrew Hyman, MD.
As the chair of the Department of Health Behavior at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, Hyland helps run the quitline for the state and Roswell.
"We get about 30,000 to 40,000 people a year that are calling us, coming onto the website, chatting with us, texting with us all, looking for help to try to quit tobacco use," he noted. "And we provide services to them."
So they've got plenty of experience helping people get started on a healthier road knowing the challenges ahead.
"But quitting smoking is hard, you know? So the first step is making that call is saying, 'today's the day,'" said Hyland. "I'm going to try to quit. Like here in Buffalo, [if] you slip on the ice, you don't lie there until April when it melts, you know? You get back up and then you continue on your journey."
Of course, there are many ways to start that journey.
"I had seen commercials on TV about it, so I remember the number," noted Austin back at home.
His preferred method was calling on the phone, where Roswell helped get him situated with tips and products.
"After I was using the patches, I started calling and checking in once a week. [I] left on my own. I'm a natural disaster," he said.
But after finding out some of the options, he might just keep things going by using the text line.
"I don't like to talk on the phone all the time. So, you know, I don't care if my phone never rings, send me a text," Ron said elatedly after seeing more options for his continued quit plan.
There are plenty of resources no matter how Austin and others choose to go about it, and it's not too late.
"Somebody is going to quit out there. Probably quite a few," said Hyland. "It's going to change lives; it's going to save lives."
"This is a good help," said Austin. "This quitline will be a good help for all [if] they call or text or whatever."