Legislature fiddles, Ohioans' health goes up in smoke

The Centers for Disease Control have just issued their report on the prevalence of current cigarette smoking among adults, and the news for Ohio is not good. While the median smoking rate for men nationally is 24.4 percent, in Ohio, 26.7 percent smoke. For women the national median is 21.2 percent, but 26 percent of Ohio women smoke. Overall, the state has the fifth worst smoking rate in the country -- with Toledo the worst city in the nation, and the Mahoning Valley not far behind. But so long as the General Assembly continues to pass legislation that favors the tobacco industry, and the state's leadership is pulling millions out of the fund established to stop tobacco use to balance the state's budget, don't expect Ohioans to stop smoking anytime soon.
Tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, causing more than 400,000 deaths each year and resulting in an annual cost of more than $50 billion in direct medical costs. While many people focus on the death toll from AIDS or automobile crashes or alcohol, in fact, each year, smoking kills more people than AIDS, alcohol, drug abuse, car crashes, murders, suicides, and fires -- combined.
Perhaps the biggest tragedy, and the one in which Ohio's leaders are the most complicit is that approximately 80 percent of adult smokers start smoking before the age of 18. According to the CDC, more than 5 million children living today will die prematurely because of a decision they make as adolescents -- the decision to smoke cigarettes.
Youngstown-Warren among the worst: And in Ohio cities like Toledo and Cleveland, where more than one-third of the men smoke, and in the Youngstown-Warren area, where nearly 30 percent of the men smoke and 27.1 percent of the women do, those communities' children are being given by example a very wrong message.
It doesn't have to be that way.
The national health objective for 2000 of fewer than15 percent of American adults smoking cigarettes was achieved by Puerto Rico, Utah and in California by women. The low prevalence in Utah and Puerto Rico may be a result of stronger social and cultural pressures against tobacco use, but in California, where now only about 17 percent of adults smoke, increases in the cigarette excise tax, mass media education, counteradvertising, comprehensive school-based programs and state-mandated policies on clean indoor air have all helped to bring about a healthier population.
But as we have noted before, when Ohio legislators are friendlier to tobacco industry lobbyists -- and the thousands of dollars they spread around in campaign contributions -- than they are to the people of the state and their children, the doctors, nurses,public health experts and parents who want to keep tobacco products out of children's hands and futures are fighting an uphill battle.