State anti-smoking programs under fire

By Alison Kemp

With the decrease in funding, youth anti-smoking programs may cease to exist.

YOUNGS_TOWN — Ohio’s anti-tobacco programming was as close to a model program as can be, said city Health Commissioner Matthew Stefanak.

“Now, it’s gone to the bottom,” he said. “It’s very disheartening.”

Ten years ago, Ohio was one of 46 states to receive a share of $260 billion in payments from tobacco companies. About half of the money Ohio received was budgeted for school construction projects. The remainder was to support anti-smoking programs sponsored by the Ohio Tobacco Prevention Foundation.

On April 2, however, Gov. Ted Strickland and the state Legislature decided to take $230 million from the OTPF’s $267 million endowment to fund a jobs development program. This is being contested in court in Columbus.

“There’s an outside chance the courts could say the funding is returned,” Stefanak said. But he and Heather Krause, the community health education specialist, are pretty confident the deal is done.

With the decrease in support dollars, Stefanak and Krause are not sure how programs will be funded, or if they will even continue to exist.

The decision to cut the funding is happening so rapidly, Stefanak said, that there is no way to prevent the interruption of services.

The program Quit Line, which was created by the OTPF as a way to help Ohio smokers stop smoking and is 100 percent funded by foundation dollars, had its 25,000th “quitter” in December. Krause is sure the number has risen since then.

Smokers can call Quit Line for free counseling sessions, and most people are eligible for free or reduced nicotine patches.

Surveys about smokers and non-smokers in Ohio have also shown the number of non-smokers has increased since the settlement money was used to create OTPF.

Most of the funds are used to support youth programming that warns children of the dangers of smoking in hopes of preventing them from becoming smokers. Without these funds, the anti-smoking campaigns will decrease, and there may be increased rates in young smokers whose habits may persist.

“The most effective way to prevent is to convince young people not to smoke,” Stefanak said.

With the reduction or elimination of anti-smoking campaigns, Stefanak said the tobacco companies will have “free reign.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the number of nationwide smokers is not decreasing significantly. Between 1997 and 2004, the number of smoking adults dropped from 24.7 percent to 20.9 percent. Two years later, the percentage was 20.8.

CDC reports state that there could be many factors affecting this percentage, but the most notable is the decline in state-funded programs for tobacco control and prevention. Funding decreased by 20.3 percent from 2002 to 2006, while tobacco-industry marketing expenditures nearly doubled between 1998 and 2005 to $13.1 billion.

The loss of state money will also directly affect each county’s health department because the foundation provides funds to run programs such as “Stand,” an activism program that works to change the cultural acceptance of tobacco use in Ohio, and other school and community anti-tobacco campaigns. Krause also spends time educating doctors about referring their patients to Quit Line.

The foundation also provides money to county health departments to investigate complaints about businesses that are violating Issue 5, which protects all workers and the public from exposure to secondhand smoke in workplaces and public places. The Mahoning County District Board of Health has received about 400 complaints in the year the legislation has been enforced, and has spent $15,000 enforcing the law.

“With the foundation, we’ve recouped about one-third of that,” Stefanak said.

He said with the elimination of the foundation, he expects more and more health departments to opt out of investigating the complaints. “Cash-strapped local health departments are going to have to think twice,” he said.

akemp@vindy.com