Anti-Smoking Effort Sees Progress

Schwarzenegger administration officials celebrated California’s success in reducing smoking among teens and adults Tuesday, while seeking to play down their cuts in the money for anti-smoking programs.

Since 1988, when voters passed a measure raising taxes on cigarettes to fund anti-smoking efforts, the rate at which Californians smoke has plummeted.

Only 13% of high school students in the state smoke -- down from 22% in 2000 -- and overall annual use of cigarettes has dropped from 113 packs per person in 1988 to 46, according to a new report from the California Health and Human Services Agency.

State officials and anti-smoking advocates attribute the drop to California’s aggressive efforts against smoking, which include laws that restrict where people can light up, relatively high sales taxes on cigarettes, and state-funded anti-smoking ads.

But the administration last year reduced funding for anti-smoking efforts, and plans a slight cut again this year as part of the effort to balance the state’s budget.

Public health advocates warn that reduced funding could allow smoking rates to start rising again.

“The program has been enormously effective,” said Dr. David Burns, a UC San Diego medical school professor who reviewed the data for the state. “But when you look back over periods of time, when the [funding] was reduced, the benefits of the program were also reduced.”

The last time the state cut spending on its anti-tobacco campaign -- from 1993 to 1996 -- smoking in the state went up significantly, said Matthew Meyers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids in Washington, D.C., an anti-smoking organization.

“Those of us who have been tracking California for the past couple of years have been deeply concerned,” he said.

Since 1988, smoking among high school students has dropped significantly; the number of middle schoolers who smoked fell from 6.7% in 2000 to 3.9% last year.

About 16% of adults smoked in 2003, the most recent year for which the state has figures, down about a third since the state program began.

Researchers at the state health agency also surveyed residents about the law banning smoking at work. About three-fourths of smokers approved of the law, and nearly all new state residents said they liked it.

About half the smokers surveyed said the law made it easier to quit, and 69% said it made it easier to smoke less.

This year, California will spend $77.2 million on anti-tobacco efforts, according to budget records. Under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2005-06, the amount would drop to $76.7 million.

That’s half of the $152 million the state spent in 1989-90, the first year of the program, and just 40% of the $165 million that federal health officials recommend for fighting smoking in California.

Kim Belshe, secretary of the Health and Human Services Agency, said that even with reduced funding, California spends more than any other state on its anti-smoking campaigns, which are funded with a portion of the 25-cent tax on a pack of cigarettes. The administration has resisted supplementing the tobacco tax revenue with other funds, citing the state’s budget problems.

If resources are declining, Belshe said, it is actually a sign of the program’s success: As fewer packs of cigarettes are sold, less tax is collected, so there is less money to spend. Moreover, she said, the state spends the money more efficiently than others -- and with better results.

“We’re really proud of what’s going on in California,” Belshe said. “The incidence of lung cancer in California is declining at three times the rate of the rest of the country.”

The state uses the money to purchase advertising on radio and television and to fund anti-smoking programs in schools, Belshe said. Currently, there are six anti-smoking ads running on general-interest programs, as well as Spanish- and Chinese-language spots.

The commercials and school programs, combined with state and local laws banning smoking in the workplace and many public areas, have combined to cut smoking in the state by nearly half since 1985, she said.

But that still leaves nearly 5 million smokers in California -- 437,000 of them teenagers, according to the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids.

In 2002, the most recent year for which figures are available, the tobacco industry outspent the state’s prevention efforts by a ratio of 16 to 1, laying out $57.95 for each person in California while the state budgeted only $3.55, according to state records.

“California is unable to adequately fund their [anti-smoking] marketing campaign,” said Terry Pechacek, associate director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “They don’t have enough money to fully fund their media campaign at levels that our science-based recommendations say it would be most effective.”

Pechacek praised California for making great progress, and said its programs serve as models for other states. But he said that the results would be better if the state invested more -- and that gains could easily reverse as spending slows.

California is not the only state where budget woes have prompted cutbacks in anti-smoking efforts. According to Pechacek, only three -- Maine, Mississippi and Delaware -- are spending enough to meet federal guidelines.

But, he said, studies have shown a correlation between the amount of money states spend on anti-smoking educational campaigns and the rate at which people smoke.

“You get a benefit for what you invest,” Pechacek said.