Anti-smoking money for Kelso well worth it
Thursday, December 27, 2007 8:27 AM PST
Printable version
E-mail this articleThe $21,000 state Health Department grant recently awarded to Kelso High School to help combat smoking is money well spent. School officials plan to use the grant to train staff and increase monitoring of locations on the smoke-free campus where students may be using tobacco, according to Daily News reporter Carrie Pederson. However the money is used in support of the school's efforts to discourage smoking, it almost certainly will make a difference.
Tobacco-prevention campaigns work, whether on high school campuses or statewide. In recent years, we've witnessed the effectiveness of anti-smoking programs supported with money the state is collecting from the landmark 1999 lawsuit settlement with major tobacco companies. The programs have been particularly effective within the school-age population. Smoking among middle-school and high-school students has been cut by roughly half since 2000.
Still, Washington, which will have collected a total of more than $4.5 billion from the tobacco settlement by 2027, could be doing far more with the money flowing into state coffers. The Legislature has invested around 5 percent of its settlement money in anti-smoking programs. That's better than what most of the other 46 states involved in the settlement have done, but still below the federal Centers for Disease Control's initially recommended spending level of $7.47 per capita.
Moreover, Washington legislators have twice dipped into the settlement money to help balance the state budget. In 2002, lawmakers borrowed against future tobacco-settlement payments to help cover a budget shortfall. And in 2005, the Legislature voted to divert almost $14 million from the tobacco-use prevention fund to help balance the budget.
Tapping into this fund for purposes other than tobacco-use prevention or otherwise scrimping on the state's anti-tobacco efforts could prove costly over the long-term. Washington's anti-smoking programs are saving both lives and money. The state Health Department estimated in 2003 that prevention efforts funded with the state's tobacco-settlement money had saved more than 28,000 lives and $134 million in medical costs in the first two years alone. Other, more recent estimates have put the total health-care savings at well over $1 billion.
Tobacco-use prevention programs aimed at young people, such as the one at Kelso High School, are particularly important. Every day in Washington an estimated 65 minors take up smoking. The addiction will eventually claim the lives of a third of these young smokers. Those numbers ought to lend some sense of urgency to the state's anti-smoking efforts.
Past Month's Most Commented Stories