Human Services News

From PR Newswire:

As state legislatures across the country convene their 2008 sessions, an important new study provides powerful evidence of the direct relationship between increased funding for state tobacco prevention and cessation programs and declines in adult smoking.

The study, being published in the February 2008 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, examined state tobacco prevention and cessation funding levels from 1995 to 2003 and found that the more states spent on these programs, the larger the declines they achieved in adult smoking, even when controlling for other factors such as increased tobacco prices.

The researchers also calculated that if every state had funded their programs at the levels recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) during that period, there would have been between 2.2 million and 7.1 million fewer smokers in the United States by 2003.

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids estimates that such smoking declines would have saved between 700,000 and 2.2 million lives as well as between $20 billion and $67 billion in health care costs.

These studies, along with reviews by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences, the President's Cancer Panel and numerous other experts demonstrate conclusively that state tobacco prevention and cessation programs work to prevent kids from smoking and help adults quit, thereby saving lives and health care dollars.

This overwhelming evidence that state tobacco prevention and cessation programs work and deliver so many health and financial benefits leaves elected leaders with no excuse for failing to fund such programs in every state at CDC-recommended levels.

Right now, the states are spending less than 3 percent.

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