Each year, the American Lung Association assesses tobacco control policies enacted in all fifty states and the District of Columbia. Release of the 2003 report coincides with the 40th anniversary of the Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health, the first widely publicized report linking cigarette smoking to cancer and other diseases.
In many ways, tobacco control has come a long way since the first Surgeon General’s report was released. The annual prevalence of adult smoking has declined 46.2 percent between 1965 and 2001.
1 Approximately seventy percent of the U.S. workforce now works under a smokefree policy.2 In addition, there is a high awareness of the harmful effects of tobacco disease and addiction, each year more and more public places and workplaces go smokefree, cigarette taxes are on the rise and a few states are fully funding comprehensive tobacco prevention programs aimed at reducing youth and adult smoking.
Still, much work needs to be done. Each year in the United States, 440,000 people die of a tobacco-related illness resulting in 5.6 million years of potential life lost, $75 billion in direct medical costs and $82 billion in lost productivity.
3 Tobacco’s toll is staggering. A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that almost 8.6 million people in the U.S. have at least one serious illness caused by smoking. For every person who dies of a smoking-attributable disease, 20 more are suffering with at least one serious smoking-related illness.4
Despite these enormous health and economic costs, state legislatures in 2003 continued to fail to enact the comprehensive tobacco control policies needed to address the tobacco epidemic. States have the ability to enact strong tobacco control laws to protect the health of their citizens—and some have done so in the past few years. Yet far too many states are shirking their responsibility to enact laws that would provide funding for tobacco prevention and control programs, protect their citizens from smoke-filled air, deter consumption of cigarettes sold by raising the cigarette tax and keep cigarettes out of the hands of children and teens.
State legislators and governors need to enact these laws and put the health of their constituents ahead of the interests of tobacco industry groups working to keep state tobacco laws weak. It is time for state leaders to face this issue honestly and begin to save lives.
This report is a wake-up call to state legislators and governors, letting them know how far they still need to go to save lives and protect health. The American Lung Association will continue to work for stronger tobacco control laws across the country.
Among current smokers, chronic lung diseases account for 73 percent of smoking-attributable conditions.5
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The tobacco industry is a powerful lobby with virtually unlimited resources. Many states have hard-working tobacco control coalitions that continually meet with strong resistance from their state legislators and tobacco interests. The grades given in this report in no way reflect the degree of effort expended by the public health community in any state. Quite simply, the grades reflect how well state laws measure up to the best in the nation or goals set by federal agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
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