Wall Street Journal Many cash-strapped U.S. states are slashing budgets for tobacco-prevention programs, raising alarms among public-health groups as the nation's progress toward getting adult smokers to quit has stalled.
The adult smoking rate was 20.6% in 2009, the same as a year earlier and largely unchanged since 2004, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That amounted to 46.6 million adult smokers in 2009.
Tobacco use is linked to an estimated 443,000 deaths a year in the U.S., making it the nation's leading cause of preventable death, according to the CDC.
States have cut their combined funding for smoking prevention in the current fiscal year to the lowest level since 1999, according to data gathered by a coalition of antismoking groups for a report that will be released later this month.
The $517 million allocated by states for tobacco prevention and cessation in fiscal-year 2011 is down 9.2% from $569 million a year earlier and 28% less than states spent in 2008, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a Washington advocacy group preparing the report, along with the American Lung Association and others.
The latest amount still exceeds the $300 million spent by states in fiscal 1999, when many programs were getting under way or accelerating their efforts following the landmark Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement in 1998 between 46 states and cigarette companies that was designed to help states recoup the cost of treating sick smokers.
Under the agreement, the tobacco companies were to pay an estimated $246 billion over 25 years to the states, though states are allowed to spend their settlement dollars on needs other than tobacco prevention.
In fiscal 2010, tobacco-settlement revenue amounted to an estimated $8.1 billion for all states.
Public-health experts and tobacco-control groups worry that states' recent spending reductions could further undermine efforts to counter tobacco-industry marketing, persuade smokers to quit and to deter young people from starting.
"There's a risk of a setback," CDC Director Thomas Frieden said of the funding cutbacks. "The data are very clear. The more we invest in tobacco control, the fewer people smoke, and that prevents illness, disability, deaths and healthcare costs."
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NOTE: CDC - In 2009, current smoking prevalence was highest in Kentucky (25.6%), West Virginia (25.6%), and Oklahoma (25.5%), and lowest in Utah (9.8%), California (12.9%), and Washington (14.9%) (Table 1)... smoking prevalence was significantly higher among men than among women, and in no state was smoking prevalence significantly higher among women than men.
Healthy People 2010 calls for reductions in adult cigarette smoking to 12% and adult smokeless (spit) tobacco use to 0.4%.¶ This report indicates that states vary substantially in prevalence of cigarette smoking and smokeless tobacco use... and the only state or U.S. territory close to meeting the target for smokeless tobacco use is USVI (0.8%). Neither cigarette nor smokeless tobacco use has declined during the past few years in the United States (3,4), and with the possible exception of cigarette smoking in California, the Health