Millions of dollars originally intended for smoking cessation programs in New England have been diverted to offset budget deficits, leaving some states struggling to fund quit-smoking hotlines, treatment programs and anti-tobacco advertising.
Nowhere is the trend more evident than New Hampshire, which collected more than $218 million in tobacco taxes and more than $40 million from the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, but spent less than 1 percent of that amount on tobacco prevention and cessation programs.
The state’s anti-tobacco program subsisted on just more than $1 million in federal grant money, one of the lowest budgets in the nation. Not one cent of that funding comes from the state. All tobacco taxes are sent back to the state’s general fund.
The $1 million in federal funding for New Hampshire helps pay for a quit-smoking hotline and smoking cessation programs in Nashua and Manchester, the state’s two largest cities, said Donna Fleming, who administers the state’s Tobacco Prevention and Control Program.
The money, however, isn’t even close to the $19.2 million that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said New Hampshire needs to adequately fund its anti-smoking efforts.
The same cutbacks in smoking cessation programs can be found throughout New England and come at a time when more than 20,000 New Englanders die annually from smoking-related diseases and as yearly health care costs to treat tobacco-related illnesses approach $7 billion in the six-state region, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Nationally, those numbers are even more staggering, with smoking-related deaths topping 400,000 and annual health care expenditures reaching beyond $96 billion.
“More and more states are spending virtually nothing for tobacco control.![]()
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