New York, which once ranked fifth in the nation for spending on tobacco prevention and cessation programs, now ranks 22nd among all states, according to a new study by a coalition of public-health groups. After cuts enacted this month to help close New York’s budget deficit, the state is spending $57 million on initiatives to reduce tobacco use — $55.2 million in state money and $1.8 million through a federal grant, the report said.
That’s down from about $82 million last year, when New York was 19th in the nation.
New York cut more than any other state this year, the coalition found.
The total this year is 22.4 percent of the $254.3 million that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends New York spend, the study said. Only one state — North Dakota — spends what the CDC recommends.
“Even in these difficult budget times, tobacco prevention is a smart investment that reduces smoking, saves lives and saves money by reducing tobacco-related health care costs,” said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
His group, the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the American Lung Association and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation issued the report.
New York’s spending on tobacco-prevention programs is lower than the report states, a spokesman for Gov. David Paterson’s budget office said. It was reduced to about $51 million in state money with the new deficit-reduction plan, and it began at $76.7 million in 2008-09.
New York’s tobacco-prevention efforts had been a model program for the country, said Russ Sciandra, lobbyist for the American Cancer Society in New York.
“The fact is that smoking rates in New York — both adult and teenage smoking rates — have been going down much faster than the rest of the country, and there was real hope that New York would reach its goal of a million fewer smokers by 2010,” he said.
New York’s adult smoking rate is about 17 percent, and the high-school smoking rate is about 14 percent, compared to the national rates of about 21 percent and 20 percent, respectively. A million fewer smokers by 2010 would put the state’s rate at 13 percent or 14 percent, he said.
New York will continue to run anti-smoking ads and its Smokers’ Quitline, and offer free starter kits of nicotine patches, gum or lozenges, said Budget Division spokesman Matt Anderson.
“We certainly believe that this is a worthy program, but the magnitude of the fiscal emergency that we are facing necessitates reductions in funding for worthy programs,” he said.
Nationwide, states are collecting record amounts of revenue from the tobacco industry but are putting less of that toward tobacco prevention, the report said. In 1998, tobacco companies reached a nationwide settlement under which they agreed to reimburse states annually for smoking-related costs, largely for Medicaid spending.
New York will receive more than $2 billion this year from the settlement and tobacco taxes and will put 2.6 percent of that toward such programs, the study said.
source: www.democratandchronicle.com
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