Ann Arbor resident Angie Dewey holds her 3-year-old daughter, Ryah, while listening to a speaker discuss secondhand smoke Tuesday at the Capitol during a rally to push legislators to ban smoking in all workplaces, including restaurants. Angie Dewey’s interest in cancer prevention and research comes from a concern for her daughter whose two grandmothers are cancer survivors and whose great-grandmother died of lung cancer.
Kinesiology senior Kelly Montgomery has been battling Hodgkin’s lymphoma on and off for seven years.
Montgomery was diagnosed at 16, and after six rounds of chemotherapy and two rounds of radiation, she went into remission hoping to live her life cancer-free.
But almost six years later in August 2008, Montgomery relapsed and was forced to take a year off from school at MSU. Her battle is part of the reason Montgomery made her way to the Capitol lawn Monday to advocate for a smoke-free Michigan and the Healthy Michigan Fund at the American Cancer Society’s Celebration at the State Capitol, an annual rally and lobby day in Lansing.
“Anything I can do to support finding a cure or stopping the progress of cancer rates I’ll do,” Montgomery said.
Montgomery was one of more than 650 residents from across the state who volunteered at the event to meet with state senators and representatives from their communities to discuss the passage of a comprehensive clean indoor air law and the restoration of the Healthy Michigan Fund, which provides funding to uninsured people improving cancer prevention, said Nancy Yaw, CEO of the American Cancer Society’s Great Lakes Division.
“Every year, (involvement) grows because (volunteers) know they are going to have direct access to their legislators,” she said. “It’s our opportunity to let the legislators hear the volunteers.”
Yaw said it is tough because legislators are very concerned with the state budget, but she said she was still hoping for restoration in funding of the Healthy Michigan Fund, which was reduced in last year’s budget cycle by 23 percent from 2007-08. Adequate funding for cancer prevention would reduce health care costs in the state, she said.
“The fund provides cancer screenings — early detection and prevention is really covered,” she said.
Emily Hendershot, MSU’s American Cancer Society staff partner, works with volunteers from the university and said she was impressed by the advocacy of MSU students.
“Days like this are important in Michigan because they show that Michigan cares about being smoke-free,” Hendershot said. “MSU students really get involved with advocacy without me pushing them.”
Volunteers met with legislators from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Among representatives on the Capitol lawn was state Rep. Mark Meadows, D-East Lansing, who said he would support any bill to get Michigan closer to being a smoke–free state.
“My position is that this is a health and safety issue we need to address,” Meadows said.
The smoke-free air House Bill 4377 recently passed in the state House, and if passed in the Senate, would make all workplaces smoke-free with exemptions for casinos, smoke shops and cigar bars.
Issues such as smoke-free Michigan are difficult for people to understand if they haven’t faced cancer themselves, Montgomery said.
“Unless you’ve gone through having cancer you really don’t know what it is like,” she said. “Going smoke-free in Michigan is important to eliminate any chance you can of getting this disease.”
Support student media! Please consider donating to The State News and help fund the future of journalism.
