PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island increased its Tobacco Prevention and Cessation Program spending slightly this year by $12,000 to $387,000, continuing a moral cancer-prevention dilemma, said Robert Dulski, director of government relations for the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network in Rhode Island.
The sum spent on tobacco prevention and cessation is only 3 percent of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended $12.8 million for state spending on the initiative. Dulski pointed out the state received $195 million this year as a result of the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, according, in part, to the number of cigarette sales statewide, combined with taxes from tobacco sales, providing a disincentive for lawmakers to use the money to curb tobacco use.
The state spent just one-fifth of 1 percent of the money on preventing tobacco use, Dulski said, earning it a red mark in Cancer Action Network’s “How Do You Measure Up?” report on the state’s status on issues critical to reducing the incidence of cancer and deaths from the disease.
A green mark on the report shows a state has adopted evidence-based policies and best practices, yellow indicates moderate movement toward the benchmark and red shows where states are falling short.
For every dollar states spend on tobacco prevention, tobacco companies spend an average of $12.40 on tobacco marketing, Dulski said. In Rhode Island, he said tobacco companies spend $70 per dollar of prevention.
“The tobacco companies are targeting Rhode Island specifically because we’re not using our money wisely,” Dulski said, adding tobacco use annually costs the state $640 million in medical costs.
In the event the General Assembly restores tobacco prevention funding to its $3.1 million spending high point in the 2000s, Dulski said the people running the program have a good plan to use it to prevent tobacco use.
“It would be spent wisely,” he said.
The state also earned a red mark on its funding for breast and cervical cancer screening. Just 5 percent, or $70,836, of the $1.5 million provided by the CDC for such screening is spent by Rhode Island, he said. Cancer Action Network’s standard is for a state to spend 33 percent of the award on prevention, Dulski said.
The state earned a positive yellow mark for efforts to ensure cancer patients receive appropriate pain medications through Medicaid, such as nicotine gum, inhalers, lozenges, nasal spray and a patch, despite tighter controls on opioid prescriptions, and another yellow mark for providing at least one type of counseling, a tobacco-quit hotline and at least one Food and Drug Administration-approved tobacco cessation medication to enrollees.
Rhode Island earned green marks for:
- Broadening Medicaid eligibility, covering people under 138 percent of the federal poverty level.
- Passed American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network model legislation establishing a Palliative Statewide Expert Advisory Council.
- Taxing cigarettes at $4.25 per pack, above the national average of $1.75 per pack.
- Passing state legislation making non-hospitality workplaces, restaurants and bars 100 percent smoke-free.
- Passing a state ban prohibiting tanning for minors with no exemptions.
“Last month, Gov. [Gina M.] Raimondo signed into law legislation that prevents minors under 18 from using indoor tanning devices – this helped boost Rhode Island to a well-deserved top ranking in regard to indoor tanning and protecting our youth from skin cancer,” said Dulski. “However, work remains to be done – we continue to woefully underfund the state’s tobacco control program, sustaining it at less than 3 percent of the Centers for Disease Control recommended amounts. This remains a huge opportunity to move Rhode Island forward in 2019.”
Rob Borkowski is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Borkowski@PBN.com.
