Governor blasted over anti-smoking program cuts

YAKIMA, Wash. -- A leading researcher of secondhand smoke sharply criticized the governor and the Legislature on Wednesday for cutting tobacco-control programs nearly in half, saying the cost to the health-care system will quickly overcome any short-term savings.

"Gov. Gregoire is no longer the anti-tobacco governor," Stanton Glantz, professor of
cardiology at the University of California, San Francisco, told a group of public health professionals meeting at the Yakima Convention Center.

"The fact that she let the program be gutted means she's just riding on the old coattails."

Gov. Chris Gregoire made her name as state attorney general in 1998 by leading the states in negotiating a master settlement with tobacco companies that poured billions into state coffers nationwide.

That settlement still brings in about $120 million a year to Washington state, with most going to pay for state-subsidized health care.

But the 2009 Legislature cut 43 percent from the state's $28.5 million-a-year tobacco-control program, which pays for the Quitline telephone help line and media campaigns targeting young people. The "NoStankYou" ads, showing the ugly side of smoking, aren't running any longer this year.

Glenn Kuper, a spokesman for Gregoire, responded that many successful programs like tobacco prevention were affected in order to address the state's approximately $9 billion shortfall.

He also said that Gregoire's efforts have "instilled a culture of tobacco prevention" in the state. "We have tougher indoor smoking laws, adult smoking rates are down more than 30 percent, and youth smoking overall has dropped by about half," Kuper said in an e-mail response.

Quitline is still active, but the amount of time it provides free nicotine gum was cut from eight to four weeks. The gum is also only available now to low-income clients.

The Legislature also approved diverting 6 cents of the $2 per pack cigarette tax from tobacco programs into the general fund, which means the tobacco account will be down to zero at the end of this two-year budget cycle in July of 2011.

"They raided our program," said Terry Reid, manager of the tobacco control program, which is housed in the Department of Health. Reid introduced Glantz at the conference, calling him the man most likely to appear in the nightmares of tobacco industry lawyers and executives.

Glantz has spent most of his career fighting big tobacco as both a researcher and activist, prodding politicians and public-health organizations like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Surgeon General.

His research has focused on the effects of second-hand smoke on cardiovascular health. Glantz said someone who has been chronically exposed to second-hand smoke has a 30 percent increase in the risk of heart disease. That's higher than the 20 percent risk of lung cancer associated with second-hand smoke.

Glantz explained that second-hand smoke, also known as passive smoking, activates platelets in the blood that form clots. When those clots are activated inappropriately in a coronary artery, the result can be a heart attack. If they clot in the brain, it's a stroke.

He encouraged the public health professionals to exercise their First Amendment rights and lobby politicians to restore funding to tobacco-control programs.

"Tell them, 'It's your fault people are dropping dead.'"

Leah Beth Ward can be reached at 577-7626 or lward@yakimaherald.com