Fight Against Smoking Failed
While the Palmetto State has made some strides, at local levels, on ordinances banning smoking discount Bond cigarettes in restaurants and bars, we still got all F’s on the American Lung Association’s “State of Tobacco Control 2012″ report, released earlier this month. The report grades states on cigarette tax rates (F), tobacco prevention and control program funding (F), coverage of cessation treatments and services (F) and smoke-free air laws (F). South Carolina was among seven states that made all F’s, while no state received straight A’s.
But the report doesn’t reflect great strides made primarily by municipalities — the first being Sullivan’s Island, by the way — in going smoke-free, admits June Deen, director of advocacy for the American Lung Association in South Carolina.
To read the complete American Lung Association report, including federal and state grades, go to postandcourier.com/yourhealth.
“Our state has more than 40 smoke-free ordinances and it is the third year in a row that South Carolina tobacco control advocates have achieved distinction for this work,” says Deen, adding that the state’s ALA will continue to support efforts to prevent young people from smoking and helping adult smokers quit.
More work is needed, though. The association estimates that the cost of smoking in South Carolina
– namely health care costs and lost productivity — is around $3.3 billion.
While the Lung Association heralded municipalities and counties, state leaders failed to take up many proposed laws in committee. In other words, they did not take action.
Furthermore, the Lung Association says that only a portion of the $5 million earmarked for tobacco prevention funding in passage of a 50-cent cigarette tax increase in 2010 was made available to the state tobacco prevention program in fiscal year 2010-11. The federal government fared a bit better in the 2012 report.
The Lung Association gave the Food and Drug Administration an A for the regulation of tobacco products, gave the major federal health care programs a C for coverage of tobacco cessation treatments, along with D’s for the federal cigarette tax and failing to ratify the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, an international treaty.
The Lung Association lauded efforts by the Obama administration for its continued efforts to expand federal cessation benefits.
In January, the administration unveiled a new comprehensive tobacco cessation benefit for all federal employees and their families through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan, which provides a model for all other federal and state cessation benefits.
In June, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that it will allow states to receive federal matching dollars for tobacco cessation counseling services provided to Medicaid recipients through the state’s quitline.
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