Almost 1,000 people in Kentucky will die this year as the result of smoking. Not because they smoke themselves, but because they live or work with people who do.

That was the message Dr. Melissa Walton-Shirley, a Glasgow cardiologist, and other volunteers wanted to make clear to local residents on Friday when they displayed 980 assorted pairs of shoes in front of the courthouse on the square.

“Right now, we have to really take advantage of opportunities like these to make a statement,” Walton-Shirley said Friday morning. “The truth of the matter is that about 1,000 Kentuckians in the next year are going to die just because they live with or work with someone who smokes in the same building. It doesn’t even have to be in the same room.”

This was the first year this type of visual display has been set up on the square, according to Taotafa Tamminga, a nurse practitioner with Cardiology Associates in Glasgow, who was one of the volunteers manning an information table at the event. She said it was important to make people understand how detrimental secondhand smoke is to patients with heart-health issues.

“I see a lot of patients who continuously come back in — reblocking their stents, their bypass grafts, their stents in their legs — and they’re struggling to quit smoking and the reason (is) the patients are usually willing to quit smoking, but the family members are not willing to stop smoking around them,” Tamminga said.

It’s difficult enough to stop smoking in the best of circumstances. When constantly surrounded by the temptation, it can be nearly impossible.

“The environmental smoke is hindering their ability to quit smoking. A lot of them come in and say, ‘I want to quit, but my son lives at the house ... my mom lives at the house. They’re all smoking and I can’t quit.’ So unfortunately, family members are not helping their loved ones to quit smoking,” Tamminga said.

Raising public awareness of the need for the passage of legislation mandating smoke-free businesses was one of the main priorities of the display for Walton-Shirley. The costs for smokers and non-smokers alike are too great, both for their health and monetarily, she said.

An Associated Press story two weeks ago noted the percentage of smokers in the country had risen this year for the first time in 15 years. Teens, age 19 and younger, make up the majority of those new smokers.

One in every four teenagers in Barren County now smokes, according to Walton-Shirley.

“If we are able to enact smoke-free laws, which ban smoking in public buildings, that gives teenagers less of an opportunity to ever become hooked,” she said.

Angel Carter has been smoking for 12 years. She started when she was just 15 years old. Carter took a few minutes to exchange points of view with Walton-Shirley in front of the display Friday morning, along with her father, Fairley Piercy Sr., and her mother, Patricia Piercy.

A lit cigarette dangled between the fingers of Carter’s right hand, which she held down by her side as she talked. She punctuated her sentences by bringing the cigarette to her lips and inhaling deeply. Giving up smoking is not something she’s interested in right now.

“They cost a lot of money,” she admitted. “But if it wasn’t for cigarettes, I wouldn’t be able to make it through the day.”

But Carter did have a novel idea on how to cut down on tobacco usage — legalize marijuana, she said.