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State Anti-smoking Programs Fall Victim To Bad Politics

Anti-smoking cigarettes advocates were given a choice in the closing days of the 2011 legislative session.

They could end their opposition to exempting cigar lounges and cigarettes online shops from the ban on smoking cigarettes in restaurants and bars. Or they could watch the Legislature eliminate all smoking cigarettes prevention and cessation programs.

They chose the latter. And as of Friday when the new budget kicked in, uninsured smokers can no longer count on some of their cigarette taxes being used to help them quit. Smoking prevention and cessation that was called for – and paid for – by decade-old Initiative 773 is all but dead.

Legislators will likely want us to see this as yet another casualty of hard times and tight budgets. But that’s empty rhetoric of the most cynical variety. These programs were paid for with voter-approved tax increases and therefore not a direct burden on the general fund or general revenues.

Starting in 2009, lawmakers amended Initiative 773 – first by transferring the higher cigarette tax revenue into the general fund rather than specific programs and now by ending funding to a key program helped by the initiative.

And then, just to make it even more slimy, budget leaders tried to shift the blame to the same anti-smoking cigarettes groups that helped pass I-773 in 2001.

For much of the session, Gov. Chris Gregoire and House and Senate budgets had kept some money in their budget proposals for the most-familiar aspect of the cessation program – the 1-800-784-8669 QuitLine number.

Callers could get nicotine replacement products such as the patch or gum, prescription drugs, and counseling and support. The costs were covered by private insurance, Medicaid or the Department of Health with initiative money.

“We felt good that legislators were keeping their commitment,” said American Cancer Society lobbyist Erin Dziedzic.

But late in the game, the Senate Ways and Means Committee linked the funding to the cigar lounge bill. The program could be funded only with license-fee revenue from the newly created cigar-lounge exemption.

The advocates refused to agree to amend their Initiative 901, passed by voters in 2005, that banned smoking cigarettes in bars and restaurants.

“The choice they were asking us to make was to sacrifice the health of restaurant workers,” Dziedzic said. “There was no way we could make that choice.”

While anti-smoking cigarettes advocates believe higher prices are themselves a deterrent to smoking cigarettes, they’ve always figured they ought to set aside some of the money both to discourage use and to help smokers get the camel off their backs.

So I-773 promised that a proposed 60-cent-per-pack tax hike would help subsidize the Basic Health Plan for the working poor, for other programs to boost the health of low-income people and for smoking cigarettes prevention and cessation programs.

Voters gave I-773 a two-thirds majority.

Washington has one of the highest cigarette tax rates in the nation, charging a pack-a-day smoker $739 a year. The state collects nearly half a billion dollars annually and continues to benefit from the master settlement agreement with buy cigarettes companies that brings in another $90 million a year.

Of all that, $26 million was dedicated to prevention and cessation. Even that amount has fallen over the last several years, and now no state dollars go to help the people who pay those high taxes. Only a $1 million federal grant is left to patrol retailers to combat sales to minors. King County has some federal money to offer cessation help to its uninsured residents until March.

I caught state Department of Health spokesman Tim Church last week while he was moving his office. He said he had just discarded most of his files on smoking cigarettes cessation.

“We just do so little of that now,” Church said.

Each smoker who quits reduces overall health costs to the state. And lawmakers should encourage initiatives that come with a source of revenue like I-733 as opposed to initiatives that spend without the bucks to back it up.

So killing prevention and cessation is bad policy and bad politics.


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