Lawmakers, there's a better way to cut smoking rate

This editorial appears in the April 22, 2010, Yakima Herald-Republic.

Here's just a small checklist of the diseases caused by smoking cigarettes: lung cancer, bladder cancer, pancreatic cancer, cardiovascular diseases of the heart and blood vessels, emphysema, strokes, aneurysms and asthma.

If those aren't good enough reasons to quit the deadly habit, the state has provided one more: cost.

While adding taxes to candy, soda pop and mass-produced beer during their recently adjourned session, Washington lawmakers also lowered the boom on cigarettes, increasing taxes by $1 per pack. That lifts the state's total tax bill of $3.03 per pack to No. 2 in the nation for tobacco products. Including the federal tax of $1.01 per pack, the average cost for a pack of cigarettes in Washington sits at $7.30.

The state predicts a sizable portion of the smoking population will stop smoking due to the tax increase, something on the order of 10 percent. That sounds good, but those lofty numbers may never be reached, thanks to further cutbacks in funding for programs to prevent smoking.

The fault lies with lawmakers hungry for increased revenue. All of the funds from the new $1 per pack tax will be swept into the state's general fund. Realizing that they needed as much money as possible to plug a $2.8 billion gap in the state's budget, lawmakers also decided to slice $2.65 million from Washington's tobacco prevention and control program. In fact, during the past two years, legislators have reduced the prevention program by some 54 percent.

That's not an encouraging trend for the state or for Yakima County, with its large population of low-income residents. Studies have long provided evidence that people with low incomes and low levels of education are far more prone to smoke. With nearly 50 percent of Yakima County's population on some form of public assistance, helping to prevent smoking is still an urgent need.

Assistance, though, may be on the horizon. It's included within guidelines for prevention and wellness in the recently passed national health care legislation. As part of that, smoking cessation medications will no longer be on Medicaid's excludable drug list starting in 2014.

And why is getting these drugs and counseling available to low-income people so important? Proof comes from the universal health-care program passed in Massachusetts in 2006. That state decided to cover most of the expenses for smoking-cessation counseling and prescription drugs for Medicaid recipients. Recent studies there have shown a dramatic drop in the number of smokers among low-income residents, falling from 38 percent to 28 percent. There was also a drop in hospitalization for heart attacks and treatments for asthma that paralleled the drop among those who quit smoking.

Getting people to stop smoking saves lives and saves money, something Massachusetts has fully recognized. Washington lawmakers should remember this the next time they consider taking another bite out of the state's smoking cessation programs.

* Members of the Yakima Herald-Republic editorial board are Michael Shepard, Bob Crider, Spencer Hatton and Karen Troianello.