Whether you live with a smoker or are frequently around smokers, you have the right to make your environment a smoke-free zone to keep you, your family, and pets' safe from secondhand smoke.

Tips of the trade to help you breathe easier - let the smokers in your life know that you want to be around them but avoid the smoke.

• Speak up - it's not easy to tell family, friends, providers, or others that you don't want smoke around you, but it is important and it is your right.
• Support them - talk to the ones you care about whom smoke about how it can impact their health and how it affects you and your family. Offer to help them access resources to learn about quitting options. Whether they are ready or not, support them!
• Include them - if the smoker you love is not ready to quit, include them in ways to make it easy for you both to live together. The plan should always include the smoker going outside the home or car to smoke.
• Remind them - offer the smoker incentives that can remind them to smoke outside and away from your family. Suggest that they have a picture of family on the dashboard in their car or in their cigarette pack. Offer to put a small sign on the front door that will remind them when they are visiting to stay outside and away from the entry when smoking. Put a cigarette disposal canister in the area where it is okay for them to smoke.

Keep open and honest communication between yourself and the smoker. Supporting them rather than excluding them will help all of you breathe easier.