NC's backward slide on tobacco prevention
Published March 11, 2015
by Chris Fitzsimon,NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, March 10, 2015.
More than one in five adults in North Carolina still smokes and more than 15 percent of high school students do—costing the state thousands of lives and billions of dollars a year–and North Carolina is doing less than almost every other state in the country in trying to do something about it.
That’s the unmistakable conclusion of a report released in December by a coalition of health groups examining how much of the proceeds of the 1998 settlement with tobacco companies each state is spending on tobacco prevention.
North Carolina ranks 47th, spending just $1.2 million a year to help convince people to stop smoking or not take up the deadly habit in the first place. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention thinks the state should be spending $99.3 million and there’s plenty of evidence to support that view.
More than 14,000 deaths a year in North Carolina are caused by smoking and the annual health costs in the state tied directly to smoking come to $3.81 billion. The average household pays $564 a year in state and federal taxes to pay for smoking-caused government expenditures.
North Carolina has never spent as much as the CDC recommends but was doing a lot more just a few years ago, running an aggressive anti-smoking initiative through the Health and Wellness Trust Fund that was set up not long after the settlement was signed 17 years ago.
The state was spending $17 million on smoking prevention programs in 2011, but the new Republican majorities in the House and Senate abolished the Health and Wellness Trust Fund and slashed prevention every year, leaving only funding for a quit line in place.
The state still receives more than $200 million a year from the 1998 settlement that was supposed to be used to address the health and financial toll from tobacco use as well as the effect on the state’s economy of the decline in the tobacco industry, but current legislative leaders have increasingly diverted the money into the General Fund and declined to fund prevention efforts.
They have also refused to consider raising the tobacco tax to discourage smoking and raise revenue for the state, citing their philosophical opposition to a tax increase of any kind—though they have already voted this year to increase the gas tax on North Carolina motorists.
The divide between states actively pushing to reducing teen smoking does not closely follow partisan political lines.
The recent report points out that Florida’s tobacco prevention efforts have reduced the teen smoking rate there to 7.5 percent, half the rate in North Carolina. Think of the lives and the money that could be saved if only 7.5 percent of North Carolina teens were smoking and at risk of becoming lifetime addicts.
Florida spends $66 million every year on smoking prevention to North Carolina’s $1.2 million. The report finds that if every state reduced teen smoking to Florida’s rate, seven million kids alive today would be prevented from becoming adult smokers and 2.2 million kids would be saved from premature death directly tied to tobacco use.
North Carolina had made significant progress in lowering teen and overall smoking rates and the 2010 ban on smoking in bars and restaurants remains an important public health victory that has saved lives and not affected the economy at all, though some on the Right amazingly still lament its passage.
That progress is at risk now, as the state backs away from tobacco prevention programs that work and that other states like Florida are using effectively.
Governor Pat McCrory talks often about the rising costs of Medicaid affecting other parts of the state budget. One obvious way to reduce Medicaid spending and overall health care costs is to reduce the number of people who smoke and to prevent more teenagers from lighting up.
We know how to do it and there is a pot of money coming to North Carolina every year to pay for it. All we need is McCrory and other political leaders to renew the state’s commitment toward public health.
It ought to be an easy decision. Thousands of lives and millions of dollars are at stake.
March 11, 2015 at 8:03 am
Frank Burns says:
Please enough already with the anti tobacco ads. It is certainly odd for the state to enjoy the tax revenue from tobacco, then spend more money to tell people to stop smoking. People already know about the health effects of tobacco. Leave them alone and let them smoke if they want to. It's no one else's business.
