Tobacco control: A long way to go

The public health imperative is to push for adequate funding for smoking cessation and prevention programs.

Editorial. Feb. 5, 2007.

Last month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, Calif.) declared that the Speaker's Lobby of the U.S. Capitol is now smoke-free.

Public health groups applauded her decision, one in line with the District of Columbia's new smoke-free workplace law. They called it a powerful message about the importance of protecting clean air and a symbolic end to the days of smoke-filled rooms in the halls where national policies are made.

But a look past this positive, high-profile action reveals a current tobacco control picture that, at best, can lay claim to only a spotty success record.

Although the American Medical Association, along with other health and anti-tobacco organizations, is heartened by indications of progress, it also is aware that much work remains if tobacco's deadly reach is to be stanched.

Nowhere is this circumstance more clear than in the report, "The American Lung Assn. State of Tobacco Control 2006," which was released Jan. 9. This document concluded that the majority of states are failing to fund adequately programs to prevent tobacco use -- a critical component in keeping kids from starting to smoke.

Specifically, while funding for tobacco prevention and cessation increased across the board in 2006, 34 states still received failing marks in this area. Another 23 states were given failing grades for their lack of smoke-free workplace laws. The federal government also was graded low for failing to enact legislation to give the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products and for allowing the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the world's first tobacco control treaty, to continue to languish on the president's desk -- despite it becoming international law approved by 140 other nations.