Maine receives mixed grades for efforts to save lives by reducing tobacco use

PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — The American Lung Association recently released its 13th annual “State of Tobacco Control” report, which finds Maine again achieving mixed results in enacting tobacco control policies that are considered necessary to save lives and help end the tobacco epidemic. The report concludes that nationally, tobacco control progress is at a virtual standstill, with most states and the federal government earning poor grades in this year’s assessment.
“Maine has a long history of being a leader in tobacco control policies, but Maine’s report card has gone from stellar straight As in 2005 to a mediocre mix of grades in 2015,” said Jeff Seyler, president/CEO of the American Lung Association of the Northeast. “We are grateful for the support of the Maine Legislature in significantly improving access to cessation services for smokers who want to quit, but much more can be done.
“As the tobacco industry spends more than ever to recruit the next generation of smokers, we must prevent cuts to tobacco control funding like those recently proposed in Gov. LePage’s budget,” he said. “We must also increase the price of tobacco products, which will encourage more people to quit while deterring more kids from ever starting to smoke.”
The “State of Tobacco Control 2015” evaluates tobacco control policies at the federal and state level, and assigns grades based on whether laws protect citizens from the toll tobacco use takes on lives. The new report comes following the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Surgeon General’s report, which first sounded the alarm on the dangers of smoking. Now — 51 years later — tobacco use kills almost half a million Americans and causes up to $333 billion in health care costs and lost productivity each year.
Maine received the following grades for 2014:
• Tobacco Prevention and Control Spending: D
• Smokefree Air: A
• Cigarette Tax: D
• Cessation: B
The report recommends the following actions be taken by Maine lawmakers:
• Enact a cigarette tax increase of at least $1.50 per pack.
• Protect the Fund for a Healthy Maine as the funding source for tobacco prevention and control activities.
“The American Lung Association of the Northeast is deeply concerned about the recent budget proposal by Gov. LePage to redirect funding for tobacco control programs to other health initiatives. Pitting prevention funding against primary care is a false choice,” said Ed Miller, senior vice president of public policy at the American Lung Association of the Northeast. “Enacting a $1.50 increase in the cigarette tax would generate over $40 million annually — providing revenue to fund health priorities. It would also prevent kids from starting to smoke and result in almost 10,000 Mainers quitting smoking.”
Sen. Mike Willette (R-District 2) said he doesn’t know if raising the cigarette tax would be an effective action or not.
“I kind of liken it to gas prices. When we’re paying $4 a gallon for gas, we’re not going to stop buying gas because it’s so much more expensive than we were accustomed to. We just kind of get used to it,” he said. “It’s kind of the same way with cigarettes. My wife and I used to smoke. Back when we quit, I think we could buy a pack of Marlboros for $2.50. I can tell you right now that if I were the same me back then and the cigarettes all of a sudden went to $4 a pack, I probably would have scaled back a little bit, but it wouldn’t have made me quit smoking.
“There were life events that made me quit smoking, and there were also life events that made me start smoking,” he said, noting that he picked up the habit when he “first started getting shot at” during Desert Storm. “I smoked like a fiend for years until one of my kids told me, ‘You know Daddy, you should stop smoking’ after I took a big coughing fit one morning. To me, I don’t think raising the taxes is going to do a whole heck of a lot. Would I be for something like that, probably not.”
The Presque Isle senator said what he considers to be a “good avenue” is to make smokers more fiscally accountable for their actions.
“If you really want to deter people from smoking, make them be a little more responsible for the effects of smoking. Tell them, ‘OK, if this is what you choose to do and you require care, you’re going to have to foot the bill,’” said Willette. “It’s like people who get lost at a national park because they stray off the path and a search party needs to go find them. The person [who got lost] has to pay for that search party because it was a decision they made. Looking into something like that — I feel — is going to deter smoking moreso than the $4-$5 they’re paying for a pack of cigarettes. I think a lot of it has to do with personal responsibility.
“The Legislature can tinker with it and try to satiate certain groups,” he said, “but it’s kind of like trying to herd cats. There’s really no good way to get your arms around it all and come up with a solution. At the end of the day, you’re basically telling someone to not do something, and when you’re told you’re not supposed to do something, people tend to rebel and are apt to do more of it. There is no easy solution.”
Jo-Ellen Kelley, community education specialist for ACAP/Healthy Aroostook, said she was relatively pleased with the report.
“Personally I thought it was a good report. I think it pretty well shows that we’re doing a lot of good work because we got some good grades including an ‘A,’” said Kelley, “but where we got low scores has to do with the amount of money that is sent from the state to us — and all of the Healthy Maine Partnerships — so that we can do the work that we’re supposed to.”
Kelley said the “A” for smokefree air pertains to “all the legislation, lobbying and all the work we’ve done about trying to get hotels, schools and businesses to care about having tobacco-free areas and to recognize that secondhand smoke is critical.”
“We passed a law that no one under the age of 16 can be in a car with someone smoking, which I think is great,” she said. “It’s that kind of work that has given us an ‘A.’”
Kelley said it’s important for people to realize that the state received the grades — both good and bad — not the local Healthy Maine Partnerships.
“When Maine got an ‘A’ it wasn’t that Aroostook County got an ‘A,’ the state did,” she said. “By the same token, Aroostook County didn’t get ‘Ds,’ the state did. However, we’re proud of our role in those good grades. We want to work with our legislators to try to bring the ‘Ds’ up. If they increase the cigarette tax, that would generate a lot of revenue which would help us out immensely.
“We know that the legislators have their work cut out for them; even the governor does as far as what to fund,” said Kelley, “but the tobacco settlement money was money that was set aside to combat everything related to the causes of smoking. There’s always room for improvement, and we’re going to do everything we can to keep the tobacco and smoking rates down in our area for sure.”
Moving forward, Kelley said Healthy Aroostook will continue fighting the good fight.
“We’ve enacted a lot of good strategies to try to reduce the smoking rate and it’s been positive,” she said. “We’ll continue as business as always. We’ll partner and collaborate with as many organizations as we can until the money runs out, which hopefully won’t happen.”
The full report for Maine can be found at: http://www.stateoftobaccocontrol.org/state-grades/maine/.