Editor’s note: This op-ed is by John R. Hughes, of Shelburne, who is a physician a professor at UVM, and the medical director for the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Vermont.
The Tobacco Trust Fund, created to sustain Vermont’s future efforts to prevent kids from smoking and help smokers quit, will be nearly empty at the end of this fiscal year.
In 1999, the governor and the Legislature asked a tobacco task force to develop a spending plan for the estimated $30 million a year the state would receive from the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) between the State of Vermont and the tobacco companies. I was a member of this task force, and we recommended that Vermont set up a trust fund to provide for tobacco control in Vermont. Our task force talked to national experts and Vermonters. It was very clear then, and it is clear now, that most Vermonters want a substantial amount of the MSA monies to fund tobacco control. This was especially true of smokers who rightfully saw the MSA monies as compensation for their suffering and wished this money to be used to prevent others from suffering the same fate.
Vermonters wanted the state to invest $8 million to $10 million per year from the MSA into the trust fund to pay for tobacco control well into the future. The plan was to use only the interest to create a well-funded, long-term program free of tobacco industry and political influence. Although the fund got off to a good start, and was over $30 million just a few years ago, only $34,000 will remain if the governor’s budget passes this year.
Without a long-term investment in tobacco control, Vermont, a national leader on health and health care reform, is missing a tremendous opportunity to address the major driver of health care costs – tobacco use.
Tobacco use is the most important driver of health costs in Vermont. The more smokers quit, the more the state will save in health care costs, even over short periods of time.
Vermont’s Tobacco Control Program has been an outstanding success in reducing youth smoking, cutting the rate in half since 2001, and in decreasing secondhand smoke exposure. Since the program began in 2001, the program has motivated and helped tens of thousands of Vermonters to quit smoking, but over 95,000 Vermonters still smoke, and these remaining smokers are more addicted to nicotine and have other life problems. For example, nationally, 30 percent of adults below the poverty line smoke and 50 percent of those with a mental illness smoke, and Vermonters are no different.
Getting remaining smokers to stop smoking is going to be more expensive. Even so, the cost of helping an addicted smoker stop smoking is much, much less than that of the cost of treating someone addicted to alcohol or prescription drugs. It is also cheaper than treating a smoker or a family member exposed to secondhand smoke for smoking-related diseases.
Tobacco use is the most important driver of health costs in Vermont. The more smokers quit, the more the state will save in health care costs, even over short periods of time. Diverting monies from the Tobacco Trust Fund to plug budgetary gaps is short-sighted, will cost Vermonters in the future, and does not respect the wishes of Vermont smokers and nonsmokers.
