Take the day off – from smoking.

Today is the 29th annual Great American Smokeout, a day when the American Cancer Society volunteers fan out across communities and try to convince smokers to quit for 24 hours. If they can make it that first day without a cigarette, maybe they’ll succeed in the tough job of quitting for good.

Tobacco takes a terrible toll on health. The American Cancer Society estimates 860 new cases of lung cancer will be attributable to smoking this year in Maine. Cigarette smoking accounts for at least 30 percent of all cancer deaths and can be blamed for 438,000 deaths a year nationally. Not only does smoking take years off a person’s life – about 13 years for a man and 14.5 years for a woman – it also causes about 8.6 million people to suffer from chronic diseases.

Maine has been a leader in the crusade against tobacco, leading the nation in the amount of money from the national tobacco settlement that is actually spent on tobacco-related programs – more than 25 percent. The state has also banned smoking in public buildings, increased the tax on a pack of cigarettes and worked aggressively to inform people of smoking’s risks.

The commitment has paid off. The smoking rates for Maine students in high school and middle school have dropped significantly in the last eight years, from 39 percent to 16 percent for high-schoolers and from 21 percent to 7 percent for middle-schoolers. The message is getting through to adults, too. The overall smoking rate in the state dropped from 27 percent in 1990 to 21 percent in 2004.

Even with the success, that leaves about one in every five Mainers still smoking.

Quitting is tough, but it’s not impossible. Today’s a good day to get started on stopping.