From: tac@cheztac.com
Date: Tue, 04/25/06
Tobacco settlement money (hundreds of millions of dollars that came from
a master settlement in 1998 between tobacco companies and the states)
has never been used in the District for its intended purpose, which was
supposed to be tobacco prevention and control.
We have a chance to change that.
On Wednesday, the District's Health Committee -- chaired by David
Catania, who you remember turned out to be a champion of the smokefree
workplace bill -- will mark up a budget measure and is considering
spending money on tobacco prevention and control. Please urge the
committee members to make sure that tobacco settlement money is used for
what it was intended -- things like cessation services for people who
want to quit and programs designed to persuade teens not to start
smoking.
A Close to Home piece that was in the Washington Post this weekend
explains the issue well and is below.
DC workplaces are going smokefree and many people will be motivated to
quit smoking. The District should help lower-income people to do so,
because quitting isn't cheap or easy. DC taxpayers gain through future
savings on Medicaid. And everyone gains if kids don't become addicted to
tobacco in the first place.
Please note that this is not a comment on the hospital project;
Smokefree DC has no position on that. We merely believe in using the
tobacco funding for its original purpose.
To send an email to the Council, click on
http://www.smokefree.net/dcfunding/
On a related note, there's a new resource available for DC residents who
want to quit smoking: http://www.tobaccofreefamilies.org. Please
forward this link to friends and colleagues who want more information
about quitting, including free counseling and NRT (Nicotine Replacement
Therapy, e.g. patches).
---------------
Tobacco Money, Going Up in Smoke
Sunday, April 23, 2006; Page B08
The 1998 settlement between the District and leading cigarette
manufacturers pulled the city out of financial peril and created a $250
million rainy-day fund. The settlement money was intended to mitigate
health-care expenditures related to smoking.
But none of the settlement money has been spent on tobacco control to
reduce costs to the Medicaid program. At the same time, the District's
adult smoking rate has gone from 18.8 percent in 1998 to 21 percent in
2004. Among Washington's Medicaid recipients, the smoking rate is a
whopping 35 percent. Smoking is the most preventable cause of premature
death in the District. It is a major risk factor for cardiovascular
disease, accounts for 30 percent of all cancer deaths and causes most
cases of emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
Mayor Anthony A. Williams wants to issue bonds for the tobacco
settlement payments from 2026 to 2040 to give the District a cash
infusion of about $200 million for discretionary use. But before that
money is locked into other projects, some of it should go to tobacco
control.
A little more 13 percent of D.C. residents under the age of 18 smoke;
that figures jumps to aforementioned 21 percent among adults. That
increase can be attributed at least in part to a lack of prevention
programs for young people.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than
60 percent of smokers in the District attempted to quit in 2004.
However, the high cost of nicotine replacement medications and of
smoking-cessation counseling makes that especially difficult for
low-income people. The same report found that smokers who live above the
poverty line had greater success in quitting.
The 2000 Census reported that 20 percent of D.C. residents live below
the poverty line. The national average is 12.4 percent. This helps to
explain why the District has the 10th-worst success rate in smoking
cessation in the nation when compared with the states.
Meanwhile, the District is experiencing the repercussions of all this
tobacco use. It has a higher incidence of 11 types of cancers --
including lung cancer -- than any state. It pays $72 million each year
in Medicaid costs for smoking-related illnesses and more than $224
million overall in smoking-related costs.
The District needs to invest in preventative measures instead of just
continuing to pay the rising costs of treating sick smokers. The D.C.
Council has an opportunity to allocate significant funds to support a
sustainable tobacco control effort in the District in the budget for
fiscal 2007. A comprehensive prevention program for youth and a
cessation program would lead to fewer smokers and lower health-care
costs for the city.
The D.C. Tobacco Coalition supports a $10 million investment in this
effort to be spread over the next three years. That may seem like a lot
of money, but it is a fraction of the smoking-related health-care costs
the District pays each year. To alleviate the health and financial
burdens of tobacco, the District must give its citizens the knowledge
and means to overcome their addiction.
-- Aaron Tallent
chairs the nonprofit D.C. Tobacco Coalition
.
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