Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin

The Daily Texan

Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin

The Daily Texan

Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin

The Daily Texan

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October 4, 2022
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States called on to restore anti-smoking funds

ALBANY, N.Y. — Steve Panetta smoked for 34 years, the last 10 at a three-pack-a-day clip. He watched his father die from lung cancer and his stepfather struggle with emphysema. He tried quitting six times before a state-funded cessation program helped him beat the habit in 2002.

Weekends now find him the guest speaker at anti-smoking programs, exhorting people to quit. He speaks for free and pulls no punches.

“I rub it right in their face,” said Panetta, 55, of Troy. “I say, ‘If I could make you feel the way I felt back then for five minutes, then wipe it away and let you feel like I feel now for two minutes, you would throw the cigarettes away.’”


He credits a similar in-your-face attitude in the state’s anti-smoking ads and programs for helping him quit.

Now, funding for those often chilling TV ads and other smoking cessation programs in New York and other recession-battered states is being slashed, sometimes more than other government programs, despite success and savings in health care costs.

A U.S. Surgeon General’s report due to be released March 8 will come down hard on states that have cut anti-smoking funds in tough fiscal times, said Terry Pechacek, who oversees the report as director for Science in the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The report can’t result in sanctions, but it has proven to move public opinion in the past to force changes by tobacco companies in how they sell cigarettes, how states fund efforts and how the federal government regulates the trade.

“It is a hard-hitting report and it’s going to say, ‘Why haven’t we ended this epidemic? Why are we still feeding all these replacement smokers into a deadly industry?’” Pechacek said in an interview while opposing proposed budget cuts in Albany.

“We’ve been saying since 1964 that we are going to do something about it, and we are basically in a stall,” he said.

There are increased federal efforts to cut into the smoking rate. The Food and Drug Administration is planning to spend about $600 million over five years to educate the public about the dangers of tobacco use.

The share of Americans who smoke has fallen since 1970, from nearly 40 percent to 20 percent down to about 46 million adult smokers now. But smoking levels haven’t changed since about 2004. Multimedia campaigns are aimed at reducing death and disease caused by tobacco, which is responsible for about 443,000 deaths a year in the U.S.

“It is a real tragedy and penny-wise, but pound foolish when states cut spending on tobacco control programs,” said Professor Kurt M. Ribisl of the Department of Health Behavior at the University of North Carolina. “There is zero doubt that well-run state tobacco control programs are very effective in reducing tobacco consumption and tobacco-related disease.”

Smoking programs have been an easier target politically in tough fiscal times when the alternative is to cut schools or hospitals, but many states also raided anti-smoking funds from a landmark $246 billion national court settlement funds from the tobacco industry for 15 years.

Published on Thursday, March 1, 2012 as: Budget cuts threaten anti-smoking PSAs, cessation programs.

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States called on to restore anti-smoking funds