Roughly 21% of Americans smoke, according to a report released last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That means about 45 million of us lit up in 2006, with 80% of that tally coming from daily puffers. And that’s still too much.
The numbers have “stalled” according to the report, and it is all for lack of political will and funding. “It is completely commensurate with the stall in resources that have been going into tobacco control,” said Dr. Matt McKenna, who runs the CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health.
“It is troubling news for America’s health that progress has stalled in reducing tobacco use, the nation’s number one preventable cause of death,” added William Corr, the Executive Director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “It is also inexcusable that elected leaders have not done more.”
Given their respective titles and organizations, the views expressed by Mr. Corr and Dr. McKenna are somewhat understandable. But it is difficult to see where they are getting the notion that anti-smoking efforts have stalled.
Elected officials can’t get enough of smoking restrictions of late. What began just a couple of decades ago as the simple – and logical – removal of smoking sections on commercial flights has now extended into just about every possible corner of our lives: workplaces, bars, restaurants, bowling alleys, and pool halls are off-limits in many cities and states. In some jurisdictions, the no-smoking halo extends several feet outside the establishment itself.
Anti-smoking efforts have forced their way into private areas too. The City Council of Belmont, California, recently voted to prohibit smoking in parks and other outdoor spaces, as well as inside apartments and condominiums. New York City, among other municipalities, is looking to ban smoking in cars when children are present.
The list goes on and on. You need a personal GPS device these days to find a legal place to light up.
For the record, I don’t smoke cigarettes (but I am waiting for the hammer to fall on my beloved cigars). And there’s nothing wrong with a healthy dose of education. But is there really anyone who still doesn’t know that cigarettes are harmful? Whether it’s the Surgeon General’s warning on every pack of smokes or billboards and TV ads, the anti-smoking messages is both ubiquitous and increasingly heavy-handed. New York ran a series of TV ads this summer, with two of episodes titled Carotid and Amputation. The images were as graphic as the names suggest.
If there is a gap in the government-sponsored message, it is filled quite ably by other outfits like The Truth campaign (now using the colorful Internet domain whadafuxup.com). Going for the ultra-hip approach to tobacco crusading, this group takes to the streets with bullhorns in their TV spots, educating concerned passersby on the dastardly deeds of Big Tobacco.
They nearly club you over the head with their message.
On the tax front, the trend is no different. The state taxes on a pack of cigarettes are now a whopping $2.57 here in New Jersey. The median for all states is 80 cents, and that’s after the federal government gets its 39-cent cut. All told, cigarette taxes brought in around $21 billion in revenue at the state and federal levels in 2006. And during the recent fight over expanding the S-CHIP plan, proponents wanted to fund the new program with an extra 61 cents in federal cigarette taxes.
Increasingly, cigarette smoking is an isolating and expensive habit. Yet somehow this all adds up to “stalled” efforts. If so, then with what figures would the CDC be comfortable?
“Utah has a (smoking) prevalence rate of 9%,” said Dr. McKenna. “New Zealand has gotten under 10%. So the idea that there is an irreducible number of people who will smoke is probably true, but it is much less than one in five people.”
How Dr. McKenna knows this to be true isn’t clear. New Zealand seems like a reach, literally and figuratively, and Utah is an equally dubious benchmark for here in the States. Populated heavily by Mormons, who tend to eschew many indulgences the rest of us consider enjoyable, Utah is predestined to have a low smoking rate. (If there is an anti-pork and alcohol division at the CDC, we should hope they are not looking to Syria for our ideal bogeys on the consumption of bacon and beer.)
Despite per-pack costs upwards of $7 and a steady barrage of anti-smoking messages, maybe it is, in fact, one in five Americans who have decided that they just want to smoke? It would seem that the CDC has no idea what an “acceptable” rate might be, given the red herring they offer up with Utah.
In the minds of the anti-tobacco crusaders, education isn’t enough if people only listen. Behaviors must change, too, even if against our will.
And the cynical view is that there is no way Dr. McKenna and his ilk really wants to see smoking rates drop to zero. Like an arch-villain in the comics, tobacco is to be beaten on a regular basis, but never vanquished.
With billions of dollars in funding and important-sounding job titles at stake, the villain must always survive for the next episode.