By NEAL WAGNER / City Editor

A Pelham-based company has partnered with the city to offer its residents a way to permanently kick their smoking habits.

Smokenders Online is owned by Pelham resident Don Seibert and his daughter, Jennifer Ossege of Kentucky, and the pair recently obtained the worldwide rights to the Smokenders program.

According to Seibert, the program teaches smokers to gradually reduce the amount of cigarettes they smoke while learning to handle everyday events without the use of cigarettes.

“By the time the smoker quits in the fifth week of the program, they know how to manage the linkages to food, caffeine and alcohol, as well as the smoking triggers that typically have made quitting so difficult,” Seibert wrote in a press release. “After their quit date, ex-smokers are further taught how to handle and deal with the everyday events, stress and pressures that so often contribute to the return to smoking that most quitters experience.”

Over the next several weeks, Pelham will be partnering with Smokenders Online to offer both online and in-person smoking cessation classes. Smokenders will hold free introductory sessions at Pelham City Hall on June 14 at 11:30 a.m. and 7 p.m.

The courses are being offered as part of the “Smoke Free Alabama” program.

At the introductory sessions, smokers will have an opportunity to sign up for online or in-person smoking cessation classes, which will begin June 21 and will end Aug. 2. Pelham residents and employees signing up for the classes will pay $50, $30 of which will be refunded upon graduation from the course.

The remaining $20 will be used to pay for manuals and course supplies, according to Seibert.

“Pelham smokers will have the option of attending the seven-week course in person at Pelham City Hall or taking the exact same course over the Internet in the privacy of their own home,” Seibert said.

To learn more about the program, visit Quitsmokingpelham.org.