Too many Kansas kids are hooked, health officials say.
According to the latest surveys, 26.1 percent of Kansas high school students smoke. Another 14.5 percent chew tobacco.
Stopping for a smoke outside the Kansas University Art and Design Building are students Leslie Kuluva, left, and Eric Loffland. Some health officials would like to see more state funding for smoking prevention for young people like these students, photographed on Friday.
And hardly a year goes by that 7,000 Kansas youngsters don't start smoking at least one cigarette a day.
These numbers ought to embarrass every Kansan, said Sally Finney, executive director of the Kansas Public Health Assn.
"There's nothing that kills more Kansans than tobacco, and most smokers get started when they're young," she said. "Every year, we lose 5,000 people because of their addiction or their exposure to cigarette smoke. We can't afford to keep ignoring this."
The only way to bring the numbers down, Finney said, is to put more money into proven anti-smoking programs. And it makes sense, she said, for that money to come from the $1.6 billion the state is receiving as its portion of the national settlement with the big tobacco companies.
But lawmakers have been slow to embrace Finney's cause. In each of the last three fiscal years, they've spent but $500,000 for tobacco prevention.
Barely a drop in the bucket, Finney said.
Last week, Gov. Bill Graves proposed putting up $1.5 million in the budget year that begins July 1.
Still not enough, Finney said.
"The formula put out by the CDC (national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) says we ought to be spending a minimum of $18 million," she said. "We know that's not a realistic number, so we plan to ask for $5 million."
A report last week by the national Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids showed only two states Tennessee and Michigan spend less on tobacco prevention than Kansas.
At $500,000 a year, Kansas' spending is tied with Montana, Alabama and Louisiana.
Missouri expects to spend $18.7 million. Other nearby states' spending plans include Colorado, $12.7 million; Iowa, $9.4 million; Nebraska, $7 million; and Oklahoma, $1.7 million.
Massachusetts leads the nation with $48 million.
Confusion
So why is Kansas so reluctant to fight tobacco use?
Finney, the eldest of the late Gov. Joan Finney's two daughters, isn't sure.
"Part of it is that there's nothing in the settlement agreement that says we have to. It can be spent on anything," she said. "Another part, I guess, is that we haven't done a good enough job getting our message out. There's confusion."
It's confusing because most of the tobacco settlement money is spent on programs aimed at helping children ages 0 to 5 reach their full pre-school potential. By reaching children and their families early, these programs help prevent health and behavior problems as they get older.
Most legislators , Finney said, assume these efforts do a lot to discourage smoking, when, in fact, they don't.
Tobacco prevention, she said, needs its own money, its own programs.
The Kansas Children's Cabinet disagrees. It says tobacco prevention is a valid but small piece of a big pie.
"It's been the board's position that 'prevention' is about creating safe, healthy and stimulating environments in which children are able to thrive and, in the process, develop the individual skills it takes to resist things like tobacco use, or substance abuse, or teen pregnancy," said Joyce Cussimanio, the Cabinet's executive director.
"The board's approach to prevention," she said, "is more global than targeting one specific area like tobacco."
Not enough
Each year, the 15-member Cabinet recommends how best to spend about $40 million in settlement revenue.
The group's latest recommendation called for spending $1.25 million on tobacco prevention.
Graves thought that wasn't enough. He raised the total to $1.5 million. He also proposed increasing the state tax on cigarettes 65 cents a pack. Whether the Legislature goes along with the governor remains to be seen.
Carter Headrick of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, says $1.5 million isn't enough.
"One out every four Kansas students smoke," Headrick said.
"Programs have been developed that have been proven to reduce high-school smoking by 30 percent; middle-school smoking by 40 percent," he said. "By not investing in these programs, you're only going to see more kids smoke, and more people are going to suffer the harmful effects of tobacco. In the long run, you're going to end up paying the higher health care costs that come with sick smokers."
Salina project
In this year's budget, the $500,000 for tobacco prevention is being spent on an anti-smoking campaign in Salina.
"We have commercials running all the time," said campaign director Julie Goertz. "You can't listen to the radio for five minutes without hearing one of our commercials."
There are billboards and newspaper ads, too.
Other components:
The sheriff's department has started a once-a-month sting operation that uses teen-agers to catch merchants that sell cigarettes to minors.
"In March of 2001, our noncompliance rate among merchants was 40 percent," Goertz said. "Now it's at 5 percent."
Police have started ticketing minors they see smoking.
Several in-school programs discourage smoking.
Adults participating in stop-smoking classes are eligible for reduced-price patches and medication that reduce craving.
Other classes reach out to pregnant women and minorities.
"Our first Hispanic program it's called 'Corazon a Corazon' had four people in it," Goertz said. "We just did another one and 50 people showed up."
Similar campaigns are on the drawing boards in Olathe and in Douglas, Butler, Cloud, Pottawatomie, Reno and Riley counties.
If lawmakers approve Graves' call for spending $1.5 million next year, Salina would get another $500,000 and two of the seven proposed startup sites would each get $500,000; Kansas Department of Health and Environment would decide which two.
In Lawrence, Diane Ash directs USD 497's tobacco prevention efforts.
She'd love to see Douglas County get one of the $500,000 grants.
"We do a lot here," she said. "But there's a lot more that needs to be done."
Students, she said, have little trouble getting cigarettes, and surveys show that 43 percent of the district's high-school seniors have smoked at least one cigarette.
Pack and a half
Kandi, a 15-year-old sophomore at Lawrence High School, said Ash's numbers are off.
"I'd say 40 percent of the kids smoke regular, like every day," she said, minutes after having an after-school cigarette with her friends in Veterans Park, across the street from the high school.
"Another 10 percent are social smokers, they only smoke like at parties and things like that."
Kandi, who declined to share her last name, figures she smokes a pack and a half a day.
"Newport 100s, that's me," she said, giggling. "Thirty-four bucks a carton, can you believe that?"
Graves' 65-cent-a-pack tax increase, she predicted, won't deter many smokers, if it passes.
"People will still buy them," she said, "They'll be pissed off, but they'll still buy them. I will."
Kandi also doubts Ash or anybody else will have much success getting her peers to quit smoking.
"It's all about stress," she said, turning serious. "I smoke to relieve stress, everybody does the day before finals, there were 40 kids out here (Veterans Park) smoking that I didn't even know smoked.
"Nobody's going to make you quit if you don't want to," she said. "And when you're 15, nobody's thinking about dying when they're what? 70 or 80."
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