Report: NY devotes few funds to anti-smoking campaigns
(The Center Square) — New York is shortchanging its anti-tobacco programs despite billions of dollars in revenue through settlements and other sources, according to a new report.
The analysis by the New York Public Interest Research Group, titled “Up in Smoke,” found New York has raked in more than $46 billion in tobacco taxes and fees and a nationwide tobacco settlement over the past 25 year, but has devoted little of that money to anti-smoking campaigns.
“Despite this windfall, New York spends less today (adjusted for inflation) on its state tobacco control program than it has over the past twenty years,” the report’s authors wrote.
The dearth of money devoted to helping addicts quit is one reason the state consistently scores an “F” in the American Lung Association’s annual scorecard of tobacco control programs.
New York collected more than $1.8 billion in tobacco taxes in the budget year that ended June 30. It includes payments tied to a 1998 settlement with tobacco companies, according to the lung association.
But the state spent only $42 million on smoking cessation programs last year, the report’s authors said, only 20.7% of the $203 million the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends it devotes annually to helping people kick the habit.
The Lung Association recommended New York pump more tobacco settlement money into cessation programs, and raise the state’s $1.50 per pack tax on cigarettes by at least $1 to provide more money.
The state hasn’t increased the tobacco tax in nearly a decade, the group noted.
More than 28,200 New Yorkers die every year from smoking-related diseases, according to the CDC. Annual costs of tobacco-related illnesses have risen to $4 billion.
Nationally, smoking-related deaths top 400,000 a year, while health care expenditures are estimated at more than $170 billion.
Anti-smoking advocates say the federal government has done little to increase spending or enact policies aimed at curbing the death toll and mounting costs.
