Anti-Smoking Efforts go up in Smoke

Even as it charges among the highest cigarette taxes in the U.S. and collects millions from an ongoing tobacco company settlement, New Jersey is stingy when it comes to anti-smoking efforts. A report released Wednesday by the American Cancer Society, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and four other organizations concluded the state ranks 43rd in the nation in funding anti-smoking programs. “A Broken Promise to Our Children: The 1998 State Tobacco Settlement 13 Years Later” comes just two months after a separate September study on the state’s anti-tobacco efforts. It concluded New Jersey has earned about $5 billion in tobacco revenues over the past five years, with only 0.8 percent of it directed to prevention programs. The fiscal year 2012 allotment of $1.2 million — confirmed by the state Department of Health and Senior Services — is about 1 percent of the amount recommended by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the September report said. The state tax of $2.70 per cigarette pack alone netted New Jersey $750 million in 2011. Settlement moneys for the same year totaled nearly $240 million. Wednesday’s findings — also endorsed by the American Heart and Lung associations, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights — suggest the state devote a dime of every dollar from tobacco revenue to anti-smoking efforts. This year, about 11,000 New Jerseyans are expected to die from smoking-related causes; more than $3 billion will be spent on smoking-related health care. Blair Horner, vice president of advocacy for the American Cancer Society in New York and New Jersey, calls funding of prevention and cessation efforts a “moral commitment.” “New Jersey will pay a high price,” he says, for not doing so. But to blame budget shortfalls caused by the lingering recession is disingenuous, adds Horner, who cites a high of $30 million committed to anti-smoking efforts in the administration of former Gov. Christie Whitman. That amount was cut by about 65 percent in 2003, under Gov. James E. McGreevey, according to the September report, called “Up in Smoke: New Jersey Reaps Billions in Revenue from Tobacco While Shortchanging Anti-Smoking Programs.”