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Dear B.J.S.,
Any decrease in the tobacco toll should should please
me....it does, but not a heckuva lot. Granted, our high
schooler's smoking has dropped down from 37% to 27.6%
since 1999; but it only puts a dent in the 70% increase
reported during the previous ten years...we are still
at an historically high level. It wasn't widely reported,
but the same study showed that use of spit tobacco (the
leading cause of mouth and throat cancers) by high school
boys has risen from 9% to 15.6%!
And,
consider these facts: Last year 45,900 kids under 18
tried cigarettes for the first time; consuming over
8.2 million illegally sold packs of cigarettes...20,100
of these kids are now regular, daily smokers. If the
current trends continue, 134,000 of New Jersey kids
alive today will ultimately die of smoking!! 7,700 children
in our state still lose at least one parent each year
due to a smoking-caused death. During any given period
398,000 kids are exposed to second hand smoke at home.
Result: 12,800 New Jerseyans die each year from their
own smoking.
As
the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids notes, "Smoking
still kills more people than alcohol, AIDS, car crashes,
illegal drugs, murders, and suicides combined -- and
thousands more die from other tobacco-related causes
-- such as fires caused by smoking (more than 1,000
deaths/year nationwide), exposure to second hand smoke
(more than 40,000 deaths), and smokeless tobacco use.
No good estimates are currently available, however,
for the number of New Jersey citizens who die from these
other tobacco-related causes, or for the much larger
numbers who suffer from tobacco-related health problems
each year without actually dying."
Those
are the human costs. How about the tobacco-related monetary
costs? The following should be of some interest to those
of you who are non-smoking tax payers: Our debt-burdoned
state, is now spending $2.6 billion annually to cover
the health care costs of persons who have succumbed
to illnesses caused directly by tobacco use. State medicare
payments for tobacco related illnesses have reached
$544 million a year. Additional annual expenditures
in New Jersey for babies' health problems caused by
mother's smoking or being exposed to second-hand smoke
during pregnancy now total from $35 to $102 million.
In spite of the high costs resulting from these truly
preventable illnesses, our political leaders are seriously
considering taking money from the tobacco settlement
fund to help balance the budget. New Jersey's 2001/2002
per capita tobacco prevention spending is only $3.73....(Yes,
only three dollars and seventy three cents!...a national
rank of 11). If prevention money, even at this low level,
has produced some good results...why are they robbing
Peter to pay Paul?
Repeated
published research studies have found that kids are
three times more sensitive to tobacco advertising than
adults and are more likely to be influenced to smoke
by cigarette marketing than by peer pressure, and that
one-third of underage experimentation with smoking is
attributable to tobacco company marketing. Maybe those
of us who repeatedly express disgust with the tobacco
industry (and with those politicians who accept tobacco's
blood money) can be somewhat pleased with what I see
as limited results but, we can still wonder how a reduction
in New Jersey's available settlement money for preventative
efforts can overcome the power of a nationwide annual
tobacco industry marketing expenditure of $8.4 billion
.....$247 million of which is the estimated portion
spent in our state each year.......
Bottom
line: it can't and it won't.
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