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That hammer came in the form of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which the president signed June 22 granting the U.S Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate all tobacco products.

I am grateful the president gave us this additional tool as we continue working to build a healthier Ohio because smoking is the No. 1 preventable cause of death and illness in the state.

Any healthy community must be built on a tobacco-free foundation.

Now is not the time to become complacent. We still have a long way to go. One in every five - 20.1 percent - of Ohio adults are smokers, and the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) has many programs and tools to help remove tobacco from the lives of Ohioans.

One important tool is the Ohio Smoke-free Workplace Act, which prohibits smoking in more than 280,000 public places and places of employment throughout the state. The Ohio Smoke-Free Workplace Act protects Ohioans from being exposed to secondhand smoke while at work or while in a public place. This is vital as secondhand - or passive - smoking is the third-leading cause of preventable death in Ohio behind only active smoking and alcohol use, respectively. ODH also advises parents not to smoke in vehicles and homes when children are present to avoid exposing them to the many dangers of secondhand smoke.

The Ohio Tobacco Quit Line - 1-800-QUIT-NOW - is another important resource for those who want to quit.

Live Quit Line counselors are available to help from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Soon-to-be-former smokers can also leave a message 24 hours a day and request a call-back time that is convenient for them.

Quit Line services are available in 150 languages and TTY service is available for the deaf and hard of hearing at 1-888-229-2182. Only 5 percent of those who try to quit smoking alone are successful, compared to 22 percent who use the Quit Line.

ODH also provides more than $1.8 million to local health departments and nonprofit organizations for youth prevention programs and to encourage schools to adopt 100 percent tobacco-free-campus policies.

As you can see, we have many tobacco-fighting tools available to us. When the hammer begins to fall later this year, the Family Smoking and Prevention and Tobacco Control Act will begin banging away at tobacco use by:

# Requiring larger, more graphic, health warnings on cigarettes packs.

# Restricting tobacco advertising, sponsorships and promotion - particularly those aimed at children.

# Banning candy- and fruit-flavored cigarettes.

# Prohibiting the use of misleading terms such as "light" and "low tar" to describe cigarettes.

# Requiring tobacco companies to disclose all of the contents of their products.

# And much, much more.

We've made a lot of progress in the 45 years since the surgeon general first linked cigarette smoking to lung cancer, but we still have a long way to go. With the knowledge we have today, NO ONE should die of a smoking-related illness.

But sadly, they still do - as many as 400,000 Americans and 18,500 Ohioans annually.

There is a reason cigarettes are commonly referred to as "nails," as in nails in the coffins of smokers. Tobacco use kills. It is my hope we can use this new hammer's claw to save lives and remove some of those nails before it's too late.