Audio clip
Susan Cooper
About one in every five residents of Tennessee and Georgia still uses tobacco, studies show, and that's just too many, health advocate say.
Although there has been progress, smoking rates have gone up and down over the past few years in Tennessee, ranging from 27.7 percent in 2002 to 23.1 percent last year, according to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System surveys that states submit to federal health officials.
The Tennessee smoking rate "is not where it needs to be, and it's certainly not a downward trend, so that's what's sort of disappointing," said Dr. Vince Viscomi, a Chattanooga pulmonologist and president of the Chattanooga and Hamilton County Medical Society.
In Georgia, rates are slowing ticking downward from 22.1 in 2005 to 19.5 in 2008, according to the Behavioral Risk survey.
"Even though it's a gradual reduction, we are seeing results," said Sen. Don Thomas, R-Dalton, a family physician who helped pass the state's ban on smoking in most public places in 2005.
In Hamilton County, smoking rates increased between 2004 and 2007, from 20.8 to 22.6 percent. Those are the two years in which county-level data were most recently collected.
Jay Collum, tobacco cessation coordinator with the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Health Department, said the upward tick in Hamilton County could just be a one-year "blip," but it could also be a wake-up call.
"There appears to be either a slowing down of the decrease rate, or ... it may be starting to show an increase. That would be my concern," he said.
Tennessee Commissioner of Health Susan Cooper said that the numerous efforts in Tennessee to help people quit or never start smoking have directly affected tobacco-use rates, which were as high as 30 percent in 1990.
"We're encouraged that things are moving in the right direction," she said.
Nationally, smoking rates increased slightly last year for the first time since 1994, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this month. The 2008 smoking rate was 20.6 percent, compared to 19.8 percent in 2007, according to the 2008 National Health Interview Survey.
The change was not statistically significant, CDC officials said.
THE CHALLENGE OF FUNDING
Culturally, Tennesseans have made "incredible progress" in attitudes toward smoking, said Shelley Courington, executive director of the Campaign for a Healthy and Responsible Tennessee.
"Smoke-free has become the norm here, and who would have thought years ago that that would be possible in Tennessee, in a state where tobacco for years was the No. 1 cash crop?" she said.
Still, low funding has hindered progress, Ms. Courington said.
Before 2008, Tennessee had not dedicated any funds to tobacco cessation, not even funding from a 1998 national settlement with tobacco companies that resulted in billions for states to implement programs to fight smoking, Ms. Courington said.
Georgia also has struggled in tight budget years to fund tobacco cessation efforts fully, said Becky Croft, regional prevention specialist for Georgia Department of Behavioral Health.
"We're really having to look at how can we all work together to make this happen without having the resources financially that we need," she said.
In recent years, Tennessee has allocated millions to tobacco prevention: $10 million in 2008 and $5 million in 2009, although budget constraints prevented any allocation this year.
"The present impetus from the state is much improved," Dr. Viscomi said. "They realized they dropped the ball and they are truly trying to make headway there."
A multi-pronged effort is necessary to succeed in cutting tobacco use, Mr. Collum said.
"In short, it's got to be inconvenient, it's got to be very expensive and it's got to be culturally, socially unacceptable. When it does that, rates automatically start to come down," he said.
GREAT AMERICAN SMOKEOUT
Today, state health officials in Tennessee and Georgia are encouraging more smokers to give quitting a chance in observance of the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout, an annual event. Smokers are asked to quit for just one day in hopes that some will end up quitting for good. "It becomes much more psychologically doable" when one succeeds in quitting for 24 hours, said Jay Collum of the Chattanooga-Hamilton County Health Department.
TENNESSEE QUIT LINE
* 1-800-784-8669
GEORGIA QUIT LINE
* 1-877-270-STOP
Health care reporter Emily Bregel has worked at the Chattanooga Times Free Press since July 2006. She previously covered banking and wrote for the Life section. Emily, a native of Baltimore, Md., earned a bachelor’s degree in American Studies from Columbia University. She received a first-place award for feature writing from the East Tennessee Society of Professional Journalists’ Golden Press Card Contest for a 2009 article about a boy with a congenital heart defect. She ...
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