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July 12, 2005 06:18 pm
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Luke Engan/CNHI News Service
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Editor's notes: WHAT WE KNOW
- Mississippi became the first state to sue major tobacco manufacturers collectively for all claims, including consumer health costs and antitrust.
- After Florida, Minnesota and Texas followed suit, settling for $40 billion, the other states joined with six U.S. territories in a common settlement.
- The 1998 Master Settlement Agreement settled all antitrust, consumer protection and certain other allegations retroactively.
- To get their full share of the money, states need to adopt a model statute that collects payments from manufacturers outside the agreement.
- About 7 percent of the money goes to tobacco control and health-related programs.
Source: National Conference of State Legislatures.
WHERE WE ARE
- Tobacco settlement payouts rang to nearly $39.5 billion nationwide during the first four years of collections, including all states.
- More than $11.8 billion was spent on health services, and another $2.2 billion on long-term care.
- Education and tobacco use prevention drew less than $3.9 billion.
Source: Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
WHERE WE’RE GOING
- TV commercials geared toward young people and emphasizing tobacco risks appear to be changing attitudes and reducing tobacco use.
- Delaware, Maine and Mississippi are the only states to spend as much as the minimum amount on prevention recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sources: Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
Tobacco fight shows gains
An anti-tobacco wave that swept the country in 1998 left billions in industry cash pouring into a fight against smoking that is finding success.
By Luke Engan
CNHI News Service
OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma City high school junior is pleased to see anti-tobacco campaigns help snuff out smoking among her peers.
Suzzanne Brandt of Classen Northwest High School helps out with Students Working Against Tobacco, a nationwide group that aims to curb teen use and enthusiasm toward the product.
Brandt said she tried smoking and did not like it. Her parents, both smokers, discouraged her from developing the habit.
“They’re the reason why I don’t smoke,” Brandt said.
But her friends are influenced by television as well as peers. Brandt aims to convince them not to light up or chew.
“I’m always trying to keep them from starting,” she said.
SWAT aims to target tobacco companies, reversing roles after some companies targeted youth, a form of marketing that is now illegal after several public lawsuits in the late 1990s.
Almost $3.9 billion has been spent on education and tobacco use prevention through money forwarded from the industry as a result of the lawsuits.
She welcomes the “truth campaign,” anti-tobacco TV spots aimed to inform young people of the risks in using tobacco.
“I’m so glad that someone’s actually putting this on TV,” Brandt said.
The message is hitting its mark, according to a study conducted by the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Michigan.
Researchers asked more than 51,000 junior high and high school students about their tobacco habits, attitudes and beliefs. They used television ratings to find how much students were exposed to the ads.
They found that students in markets where the ads are more visible not only smoke less, but are more aware of the health risks. The researchers’ findings were published in the July 2005 Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
Settling for billions
Brandt was 9 when 46 states and six other places under U.S. governance entered into the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with major tobacco companies.
Under the agreement, the industry is paying funds that are used in part to change attitudes toward smoking and cover the health costs. Total payments surpass $39 billion.
The other four states, Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi and Texas, each have a similar agreement. They entered litigation before the master settlement emerged.
The Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi gets $20 million in yearly settlement funds to change attitudes toward tobacco in the state.
From 1999 to 2003, tobacco use dropped by 28 percent in public high schools and 52 percent in public middle schools, said Sharon Garrison, communication director for the partnership.
Local civic and church groups do much of the work, and many get grants from the partnership - like the Community of Christians Helping Youth in Picayune, Miss., or Greater Poplar Springs Community Outreach Center in Meridian, Miss.
The partnership has recently come under fire from politicians who oppose using state funds for private nonprofit corporations, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is among them. He recently appealed a court ruling against ending the payments.
Texas’ tobacco settlement funds topped $2 billion in the first four years under that state’s agreement.
The largest amount, almost $1.8 billion, went to health services. Anti-tobacco use education programs cost almost $176 million.
The Minnesota state government and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota settled their lawsuit in 1998.
Not enough?
Programs to reduce smoking and stop young people from lighting up a new habit are underfunded, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
Only three states meet the CDC’s recommended minimum. No state comes near CDC’s maximum, estimating the point when additional dollars would do little good.
“The more that you spend on tobacco control in your state, the more effective that it is,” said Doug Mathiney, past chair of the tobacco control network of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers.
Programs are costly, but they remain cost effective when combined with the right policies, he said.
Mathiney became involved in the network in 1994. He remembers the truth campaign started in Florida as a “youth-led and youth-driven” program.
Soon, anti-tobacco ads became national with funding from the American Legacy Foundation, created in Washington, D.C., under the 1998 agreement.
The foundation chose heavy saturation in some markets and light saturation in others. A third category got moderate exposure.
Funding for the campaign fell after the initial years of the settlement. But the foundation matches some state funds, Mathiney said.
The countermarketing tactic is not alone in seeking to convince people not to smoke.
Tobacco phone lines to help people quit see surges in calls when tobacco taxes rise, which has happened in most states in recent years.
But the helplines often lack the funding to handle the rash of calls when they buy advertising to get their number out.
Mathiney, who works with tobacco education programs for the Oklahoma Sate Department of Health, said the state’s helpline rations news releases so the phone bank can handle calls.
In schools, tobacco education packets have become less time-consuming to fit busy schedules.
Mathiney put the costs of tobacco prevention programs in perspective.
Citizens spend hundreds indirectly because of smoking, even if they are not around smoke.
The costs average $600 for each Oklahoman, between health expenses borne by diseased smokers and those picked up by taxpayers or fpeople with health insurance, Mathiney said.
By comparison, tobacco companies invest $60 in marketing per person. Prevention programs should be $6 per head, under CDC guidelines. But about $2.50 is now available.
Luke Engan is CNHI Oklahoma reporter.
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