State governments received USD 25.7 billion (EUR 19.2 billion) from tobacco taxes and settlements last year and spent only USD 462.5 million on prevention programmes, the American Lung Association (ALA) said in its annual review of tobacco control.

Forty-two states received a failing grade for spending less than half the amount recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for tobacco programmes. The CDC recommends states spend a collective USD 3.7 billion annually on prevention and control, according to the report. Two states, Alaska and North Dakota, received the highest mark for spending on prevention and control.
There is an “urgent” need to tax all tobacco products at similar rates to make them equally unattractive to consumers, according to the ALA’s State of Tobacco Control 2013.
ALA also criticized the Obama Administration and its tobacco regulatory body, the Food and Drug Administration, saying the federal government was “largely absent” last year in the campaign to reduce tobacco use. Failure to act has encouraged increased use of smokeless tobacco and non-tobacco nicotine products that “sustain a user’s addiction to nicotine and tobacco products instead of the use quitting,” the report states.
Tobacco interests spend a near record amount of USD 53 million in the 50 states to influence candidates and ballot issues, most of it in California to defeat a referendum on increasing the state cigarette tax by one dollar, the report states.
“With the exception of the federal government’s first-ever paid quit smoking campaign, 2012 can best be summarized as a missed opportunity for the Obama Administration,” the report states. “An ever-expanding and evolving tobacco industry pursues new users with ruthless zeal and strengthens its grasp on its current victims by creating new products and new ways to market them.” (ci)