Expanded quitline

WHEN IT COMES to reducing the human and financial toll of smoking, nothing is more effective than prevention. But the unfortunate fact is that it’s too late for that strategy to help the 22 percent of adults in this state — 714,000 people — who already are addicted to nicotine.

So we’re glad to see that the Department of Health and Environmental Control has expanded and improved its free telephone counseling service.

The agency has offered residents free use of the S.C. Tobacco Quitline since 2004, but in a limited capacity. The new Quitline, which cranked up in mid-August, is available from 8 a.m. to midnight seven days a week, at 1-800-QUIT-NOW. All callers receive one free counseling session. Those who have insurance will get referrals to help them continue their cessation efforts.

Callers who are uninsured or insured through Medicaid — in other words, those whose smoking ends up costing taxpayers dearly — can receive a full range of services: three more scheduled sessions with their assigned “quit coach,” all the unscheduled conversations they need with their coach, an individualized quit plan and access to an Internet-based Web Coach program that their human coach will review.

DHEC is using $250,000 in federal funds to pay for the expanded Quitline, which is modeled after programs that have been shown to increase the success rate by up to fivefold. It’s just one of several programs that the state has invested in in recent years — most notably covering smoking cessation assistance for state employees and Medicaid recipients — as officials come to understand that it costs the state more to treat the effects of smoking than to help people quit.

The fact that the state can reduce its insurance and Medicaid costs through smoking cessation programs is extraordinary when you realize that on average, fewer than 10 percent of the attempts to quit actually succeed. Even with such low success rates, for instance, officials with the state employee health plan projected that every $1 they spent on cessation programs would save taxpayers $8 in medical treatment costs in just five years.

That suggests that funds spent on the expanded quitline are money well spent. It also underlines the need for our state to get serious about prevention.