Anti-Smoking Programs Are Slashed

Wall Street Journal
November 9, 2010

Many cash-strapped U.S. states are slashing budgets for tobacco-prevention programs, raising alarms among public-health groups as the nation's progress toward getting adult smokers to quit has stalled.

The adult smoking rate was 20.6% in 2009, the same as a year earlier and largely unchanged since 2004, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That amounted to 46.6 million adult smokers in 2009.

States have cut their combined funding for smoking prevention in the current fiscal year to the lowest level since 1999, according to data gathered by a coalition of antismoking groups for a report that will be released later this month.

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