This month, the NYC Health Department launched an anti- smoking ad campaign to go along with the NYC Quits Smoking patch and gum giveaway. As a result of programmatic efforts like these, youth and adult smoking rates in New York have fallen faster than the nation as a whole, and are at their lowest levels on record. Despite this, however, the state Assembly’s proposed budget released this weekend eliminates funding for the state’s Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Program.
New York’s Tobacco Control Program – a division of the Department of Health – implements evidence-based strategies to prevent and reduce tobacco use. The program funds important services, such as the New York State Smokers’ Quitline, which helps free people from an addiction that kills 25,000 New Yorkers each year, and community-based efforts which discourage youth from ever beginning to smoke.
As the economic cost of smoking in New York currently exceeds $14 billion annually, cutting back on a program that helps reduce these costs would be incredibly damaging to the both the public’s health and the state’s economy.
I urge my fellow Queens community members to contact our representatives in both the Assembly and the Senate in order to urge them to support a final budget bill that includes the original allocation of $58.4 million for the Tobacco proposed by Governor Cuomo.
Cordelia Erickson-Davis, MPH
Astoria
