Jump to full article: Cleveland (OH) Plain Dealer, 2009-06-09
Author: Harlan Spector/Plain Dealer Reporter
Intro: Even before the 62-cent-per-pack federal tax took effect April 1, nicotine was losing its grip on a growing number of Ohioans. Recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show 20 percent of Ohio adults called themselves smokers in 2008. That's the lowest level anyone can remember, certainly the lowest since the government began annual state surveys on smoking in 1995.
One out of five Ohioans who smoked just four years earlier, in 2004, has quit.
This downward trend is pinned on a variety of causes -- the escalating cost of cigarettes, Ohio's two-year-old workplace smoking ban, anti-smoking programs and social pressure.
The drop-off in smoking has big implications for public health and the costs of treating tobacco-related illnesses. Annual health-care costs directly related to smoking in Ohio are said to be more than $4 billion, and taxpayers pick up about $1.4 billion of that through the state Medicaid program.
But whether the trend can be sustained is open to question. Abboud's wish that cigarettes be outlawed speaks as loudly as anything to the addictive power of nicotine. . . .
But some are warning that Ohio's progress is threatened by cuts in anti-tobacco programs and legislative challenges to the state indoor smoking ban. State leaders last year diverted $230 million in anti-smoking money for a jobs program, and abolished the tobacco prevention foundation that controlled it. The money is still tied up in a court battle in Franklin County.
"A lot of things we've done to get to this point are now being reversed," said Shelly Kiser, director of advocacy for the American Lung Association of Ohio. "We're winning. We're in the playoffs and now [our progress is] going to stop."
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