Washington, DC Needs to Do More to Reduce the Toll of Tobacco
While DCTFF has made impressive progress with its current budget, tobacco use continues to take its toll on DC residents, especially in Wards 5 through 8, and more funding is needed to enable it to continue the work it has already started. DCTFF has implemented a model that specifically targets the underserved, low SES smokers who are less likely to have access to evidence-based treatments, and provides significant support to these smokers through cessation services.
Tobacco use kills more than 700 DC residents every year and costs the District $243 million just in annual excess health care costs – much of it borne by taxpayers. Productivity losses from smoking total an additional $232 million per year in the District, not even counting the productivity declines from smokers being sick more often than other workers and taking cigarette breaks while on the job. Despite recent progress in reducing smoking rates, 16.2 percent of adults in DC still smoke, a rate that varies widely among different wards. Youth also continue to smoke – 10.5 percent of high school kids smoke, and 8.1 percent of high school males use smokeless tobacco products. More than 1,600 District kids try smoking in the state each year and 400 more kids become regular, daily smokers every year, one-third of whom will die prematurely.* Statistics can be numbing, but we cannot forget that they represent mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, colleagues and friends. Their suffering and their deaths have devastated too many families and communities.
The CDC recommends that DC spend $10.5 million per year on a comprehensive tobacco control program that includes District-wide and community programs and media campaigns to prevent kids from starting to smoke and to help smokers quit.4 Not including grant money from the CDC, DC only spent $3.6 million on tobacco prevention in FY 2009. This ranks DC 15th in the country in funding tobacco control programs.
At the same time, DC received $74.9 million from the 1998 tobacco lawsuit settlement payments, related bonus payments, and its tobacco taxes. The tobacco settlement was meant to provide funds to support state tobacco prevention efforts; but, so far, DC has not adequately allocated the tobacco settlement payments to prevent and reduce tobacco use and its harms.
Meanwhile, tobacco companies are spending at least $16.0 million annually on marketing and promoting their products in the District, especially in the Wards where you see the highest tobacco use rates. Many of these efforts target specific populations and are meant to encourage youth to start smoking, either by making the products look attractive or by lowering the product price to make them accessible to price-sensitive youth. Tobacco companies’ own documents reveal how they consider youth the future of their business.
Although the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement placed some restrictions on tobacco company marketing activities, it failed to address many important matters. For example, the tobacco companies significantly increased their point-of-sale advertising after the MSA’s ban on tobacco billboards went into effect. This trend continues today as tobacco companies have recently focused on in-store promotions and point-of-purchase advertising to attract younger smokers.
This benefits the tobacco companies since research indicates that retail cigarette advertising increases the likelihood that youth will initiate smoking and cigarette promotions increase the likelihood that youth will move from experimentation to regular smoking.5
In addition, evidence clearly demonstrates that the tobacco industry targets the African-American community through intense advertising and promotional efforts. African-American communities have been bombarded with cigarette advertising – research indicates that there is more interior and exterior tobacco advertising in retail outlets in low-income communities and communities with larger African-American populations. In addition, since the MSA, the average youth in the United States is annually exposed to 559 tobacco ads, every adult female 617 advertisements, and every African American adult 892 ads.
Further, new and less-expensive candy- and fruit-flavored products are being marketed aggressively, and young people are the most likely to use them.* A proven-effective way to oppose tobacco companies’ attempts to attract youth to a lifetime of addiction and health problems is to invest in a comprehensive tobacco prevention program.
