Saint Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport hosted the annual Great American Smokeout Thursday.

Workers at the event, which is held nationwide, offered smokers advice to encourage them to quit. They also tried making a financial argument against smoking.

"A lot of the teenagers who are smoking, when they realize that they're spending an average between $2,000 and $3,000 while they're in high school, they want to kick themselves," says Susan Richards, of SWIM Across the Sound, a charitable foundation run by Saint Vincent's Medical Center.

"They're so angry, that could've been college tuition money, they could've bought a car," she says.