The number of teen-agers who consider smoking cigarettes appears to rise quickly and sharply when states cut funding for anti-tobacco programs, according to a U.S. study released Thursday.
Researchers came to that conclusion after surveying kids between the ages of 12 and 17 in Minnesota last November and December, about six months after the Midwestern state halted an aggressive anti-tobacco campaign that targeted youth.
Nearly 53 percent of 1,105 teens surveyed did not strongly disagree when told they would smoke a cigarette in the next year. That was nearly 10 percentage points higher than those who said the same thing in a similar survey last summer.
“This is pretty bad news and potentially an early harbinger of what we’re going to see in other states as well,” said Dr. David Nelson, one of the authors of the study, which was published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Smoking rates linked to program funding
Nelson, the senior scientific advisor in the CDC’s office of smoking and health, said the survey underscored how quickly smoking habits and behaviors could change in the absence of properly funded anti-tobacco campaigns.
Minnesota reduced its funding for such programs by more than 80 percent between 2000 and the summer of 2003.
Federal health officials fear that if states do not continue to fund anti-tobacco programs this could prompt a resurgence of teen smoking, which has been declining in the United States for the past five years.
Keeping this group from picking up the habit is a key part of the U.S. government’s effort to cut the smoking rate in the nation in half by 2010. The majority of Americans who become regular cigarette smokers begin during adolescence.
About 440,000 Americans die each year from lung cancer and other diseases related to tobacco use, making smoking the leading preventable cause of death in the United States.
Smokers also strip an estimated $157 billion worth of medical treatment, lost wages and other expenses every year from the nation’s coffers.
