The ravages of smoking on our society are ghastly. The human cost, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is more than 443,000 lives lost annually. The economic damage each year in our country is $157 billion in medical costs and lost productivity.
Nevertheless, small victories pop up occasionally in America’s battle to reduce the deadly inhalation — first-hand or second-hand — of carcinogenic tobacco smoke. Many of these achievements are statistical, and several recent numbers have us thinking this national battle is worth waging:
As reported in last Saturday’s Columbian, our state’s adult smoking rate in 2009 dropped to a new low of 14.8 percent, a significant reduction from 15.3 percent the year before. (The state Department of Health surveyed more than 20,000 adults by telephone, asking about smoking and other health behaviors.) The new rate ranks third among states, trailing only Utah and California.
Clark County residents should be proud that, for the first time, our smoking rate (14.4 percent) ranks below the state’s. The local rate has plunged from 16.7 percent in 2008. Theresa Cross of the county’s tobacco prevention and education program said that, taken over three years, the local rate has averaged 16.2 percent.
Why are smoking rates going down? The reasons are countless, and at least two are speculative. But we don’t think it’s coincidental that reduced smoking rates have occurred (1) since the state in 2006 implemented a ban on smoking in public places and (2) tobacco taxes continue to rise, currently $3.03 per pack of cigarettes, third-highest in the nation.
Many people probably quit smoking because they grew tired of the inconvenience of the smoking ban. Many others quit smoking because they decided they couldn’t afford it ($2,000-plus per year for a pack-a-day smoker).
Anti-smoking activists must work hard to avoid gloating today, more than four years after the statewide ban began. More proper would be a respect for lives saved and dollars no longer wasted. We’ve said all along that the smoking ban is not an attack on the rights of smokers, who remain free to smoke as much and as often as they like in private. No, our state’s smoking ban is about public health, the people’s right to avoid inhaling second-hand smoke in public.
Controversial at the time but backed by almost 63 percent of voters (and almost two-thirds of voters in Clark County), Initiative 901 proved so wise that Oregon followed suit with a smoking ban in 2009. Likely not coincidentally, the amount of cigarettes sold in our neighbor state dropped 46 percent from 1996 to 2009.
Still, the march has only begun, and many pockets of discouraging news must be addressed:
“The rates for people with low incomes (29 percent) and low education levels (27 percent) haven’t budged,” Cross said, and among people with mental health or substance-abuse problems, smoking rates soar up to 80 percent.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that smoking among high school students is not declining as rapidly as before. But at least it continues to drop: 20 percent of students last year, down from 22 percent 2003.
Also troubling is that the use of smokeless tobacco among people who also smoke has more than doubled in the past 10 years. Many were drawn in that direction by insidious marketing strategies of tobacco companies, plus the infusion of flavoring into tobacco and other efforts to push sales of the toxic products.
So we’re all left with a mixed bag, the enhanced protection of nonsmokers from exposure to second-hand smoke, coupled with a few encouraging numbers, but all balanced by the continued loss of lives and dollars to the pernicious addiction.
