Are states spending enough on tobacco control and prevention?

Despite collecting billions in tobacco-related revenues, states plan to spend relatively little on control and prevention programs in the 2015 fiscal year.

States this fiscal year are expected to collect $25.6 billion in revenues from payouts from the blockbuster 1998 tobacco settlement as well as tobacco taxes, according to a new report, by a coalition of groups opposed to smoking. The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention recommends states spend $3.3 billion overall on control and prevention. Yet states only have plans to spend $490 million—the equivalent of about 15 percent of the CDC-recommended amount and 2 percent of the tobacco-related revenues.

Only two states—North Dakota and Alaska—plan to spend as much on tobacco control and prevention as recommended by the CDC, according to the report, titled “Broken Promises to Our Children” and produced by a coalition of groups including the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids,the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the American Lung Association, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights.

Five other states—Delaware, Oklahoma, Hawaii, Wyoming and Maine—plan to spend half the amount recommended by the CDC, while 31 states and D.C. plan to spend less than a fifth of the recommended amount. New Jersey is the only state to have dedicated zero funds to tobacco prevention this year. In its report earlier this year, the CDC said its recommendations for tobacco control and prevention spending would help “to reduce tobacco use and the personal and societal burdens of tobacco-related disease and death.” That report identifies tobacco use as ” the single most preventable cause of disease, disability, and death in the United States.”

 “Every scientific authority that has studied the issue, including the Surgeon General, the CDC, the [Institute of Medicine], the President’s Cancer Panel and the National Cancer Institute, has concluded that when properly funded, implemented and sustained, these programs reduce smoking among both kids and adults,” write the authors of the “Broken Promises” report.