After years of declining funding, anti-smoking efforts in Vermont are getting a financial boost.
The state’s fiscal year 2019 budget statute allocates an additional $1 million for tobacco-control projects. It’s the first such increase in more than a decade, and officials are trying to make it last by spreading it among five programs over two years.
The two biggest priorities are attracting more adults to the state’s stop-smoking programs and educating young people about the risks associated with e-cigarettes. The latter effort is important, officials say, as a growing number of high school students say they’ve tried so-called “electronic vapor products.”
The state’s new campaign will address “the myth that e-cigarettes are harmless,” said Rhonda Williams, chronic disease prevention chief for the state Health Department. “They do contain harmful components, with a special emphasis on nicotine.”
Anti-smoking advocates have drawn a direct line between Vermont’s stagnating smoking rates and its dwindling tobacco-control funding.
The state’s adult smoking rate rose one percentage point between 2015 and 2016 and now stands at 18 percent. That’s higher than the 15.5 percent national average.
Among youths in grades nine through 12, the state’s latest risk behavior survey showed that smoking rates dropped from 11 percent in 2015 to 9 percent in 2017. But the number of high school youth who had ever tried an electronic-vapor product increased from 30 percent to 34 percent, and middle school students also were more likely to have tried such products than they previously had been.
State officials have not had much money at their disposal to address such issues. Vermont”s Tobacco Control Program — which includes prevention, enforcement and cessation efforts — has seen a steady decline in its budget.
The control program gets no money from the state’s tobacco product tax. And it receives only a small sliver of Vermont’s annual “master settlement agreement” funding from the tobacco industry.
In a January report, the Vermont Tobacco Evaluation and Review Board recommended that the Tobacco Control Program’s funding rise from $3.56 million to $5.65 million.
The Legislature’s subsequent allocation of an additional $1 million from a special, one-time tobacco settlement moves the program closer to that goal. Advocates were hoping for more, but they say they’ll take what they can get.
“The $2 million (increase) would have gotten us further, faster,” said Amy Brewer, former chair of the Tobacco Evaluation and Review Board. “But we’re trying to be very smart and strategic about it.” The Legislature’s new allocation is to the Agency of Human Services, but the statute says “the use of these funds shall be pursuant to the plan specified by the Tobacco Evaluation and Review Board.” So the board met earlier this month to decide how to parcel out the money.
“The conversation was really around what can we do with one-time money … so we didn’t want to increase infrastructure or anything like that,” said Brewer, who still was serving as the board’s chair at that time.
Officials decided to allocate half of the $1 million to expanding smoking-cessation outreach to adults. The goal is to make more people aware of the free resources available via the state’s 802 Quits program.
“Nationwide — and we see this similarly in Vermont — even though a majority of smokers want to quit at any one time, there are fewer people using the quit line,” Williams said.
One challenge is the fact that more smokers are struggling with dependence on other substances or with depression, Williams said. “With those factors, it is harder for people to be able to quit tobacco use,” she said.