Report flunks state efforts to stop smoking

Vince Adams, 40, enjoys a smoke on Main Street in downtown Greenville Tuesday afternoon. Staff/Owen Riley Jr. e-mail this story Related Online extra • American Lung Association's State of Tobacco Control 2003 for South Carolina

She was 15.

"But I still went back for another," Gilmartin, said as she tried to use the Wachovia building in downtown Greenville to shield a wind that made the afternoon's 42 degrees feel like about 35.

Gilmartin, now 48, has made at least five attempts to quit, the latest of which ended three weeks ago on a balcony overlooking New Orleans' Bourbon Street. She says she wishes now she had never taken that first puff.

But South Carolina is failing when it comes to funding tobacco prevention programs and implementing measures to protect people from the effects of tobacco, according to the American Lung Association's State of Tobacco Control 2003 report.

It found:

— South Carolina is spending $1.2 million on tobacco prevention programs, a fraction of the $24 million recommended by the Centers for Disease Control.

— Smoking costs South Carolina about $2.5 billion each year in health care costs and lost productivity.

— South Carolina has no laws that protect residents from secondhand smoke while at work, in restaurants or bars.

— The state's cigarette tax of 7 cents per pack ranks 48th among all states.

— The state's cigarette tax generates $25 million a year in revenue, but Medicaid spends $307 million each year to treat smoking-related disease.

South Carolina is one of six states which received straight F's for tobacco prevention and control spending, smoke-free air efforts, cigarette taxes and youth access.

"How many more preventable deaths must occur and how many more children must become addicted to cigarettes before we say enough?" said Jakki Rawlinson, an American Lung Association of South Carolina board member.

In South Carolina, nearly 27 percent of adults smoke. One in three high school students smoke.

Those numbers could come down if more money was spent on prevention programs, said Greg White of the American Lung Association of South Carolina.

But the state only spent $2 million of its tobacco settlement money on prevention last year. No state money was earmarked for it this year, he said.

Even though an attempt to increase the cigarette tax to the national average of 60 cents failed last year, the association is pushing for it again as a solution to two of the state's problems — rising Medicaid costs and shrinking budgets.

But Carol Reeves, executive director of Greenville Family Partnership, said she's seen no indication that a cigarette tax increase will pass this year.

"We are still a pro-tobacco state," she said. "Tobacco has a hold on us, an influence on us."

Increasing the tax to $1 per pack would generate more than $300 million more for the state and decrease youth smoking by 21 percent, White said.

"Prevention programs work," he said.

Vince Adams, 40, of Simpsonville, is reminded of that every time his two elementary school-aged children pressure him to quit smoking.

He started to smoke at age 30 because he had friends who smoked. And, while it's not a habit he enjoys, it's a habit he hasn't tried to break — yet.

Adams, who smokes a pack every three days or so, said his children tell him often that smoking is bad and recite the reasons why he should quit.

"This is the year, absolutely," he said.

Jason Sietman, 28, of Taylors, said he quit smoking for seven months, but started back after his wife brought home a carton of cigarettes for him in May because "I was being a jerk."

He said a major health problem would be about the only thing that would make him quit.

Cost wouldn't.

"It's too addictive a substance for it to be a cost thing," he said.

Others say they have no intention to quit.

"There are worse habits to have," said Samantha Mulliger, 27, of Greenville, who has been smoking since she was 18.