States urged to spend more to cut smoking rate

The U.S. government's effort to cut the adult smoking rate to 12 percent or less by 2010 will fail unless most states increase funding for anti-tobacco programs, federal health officials said on Wednesday.

The warning by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention accompanied a study showing the vast majority of states in 2003 were nowhere near the nation's ambitious smoking target.

The smoking rate among states last year ranged from a high of 30.8 percent in Kentucky to a low of 12 percent in Utah, the only one to reach the federal target. Utah has a heavy proportion of Mormons, who are religiously opposed to smoking.

About 440,000 Americans die each year from lung cancer and other diseases related to tobacco use, making smoking the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, according to the federal government.

"It's not a matter of not knowing what to do, it's a matter of not doing what we know works," said Terry Pechacek, associate director for science in the CDC's office of smoking and health.

"Unfortunately, a very small number of our states are investing in the types of programs that we know can reduce the level of smoking," Pechacek added.

States spent $541.1 million on anti-tobacco programs in 2003, a 28 percent reduction from 2001 and less than 3 percent of the estimated $19 billion they expected to receive from tobacco excise taxes and tobacco settlement money. The CDC did not say how much the states spent in 2002.

Tobacco companies agreed in 1997 and 1998 to pay $206 billion as part of a landmark legal settlement with a number of states that had sued the industry to recoup the health-care costs of treating sick smokers.

For the 2004 fiscal year, only Arkansas, Delaware, Maine and Mississippi were investing the minimum per capita amount recommended by the CDC for tobacco-control.

A related study published by the CDC on Wednesday found air contaminants linked to second-hand smoke fell 84 percent in 20 bars, restaurants and other venues in western New York shortly after a state indoor smoking ban went into effect in 2003.

The dramatic drop in levels of respirable suspended particles, an accepted marker for second-hand smoke, should encourage other states and the District of Columbia to pass similar indoor smoking bans, researchers said.

An estimated 35,000 non-smokers in the United States die every year from heart disease caused by second-hand smoke. Three thousand die from lung cancer caused by such exposure.