State anti-smoking programs in the future will learn from the mistakes of the past, Washington public-health officials said yesterday.

The state wants to spend $30 million over the next two years on a comprehensive tobacco-prevention program financed with money won in a lawsuit against tobacco companies. State Health Secretary Mary Selecky vowed that the new program will avoid the pitfalls identified by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, which released a groundbreaking report Tuesday that said current school-based, anti-smoking efforts don't work. The Hutchinson research examined the effectiveness of programs, used in schools across the country for the past 20 years, that tried to teach youths to resist peer pressure and tobacco-company advertising. The 15-year study of 8,400 students in Washington state found almost no difference in the smoking rates between youths who took part in special classes and those who didn't. "We're going to use this good science to make sure we don't repeat what didn't work," Selecky said yesterday. The Hutchinson center findings come at a crucial time for the state. Washington expects to receive about $4.5 billion over the next 25 years as its share of a 1998 settlement the tobacco industry made with 46 states. The state is using $15 million in settlement money this year to start an anti-tobacco program. The previous biennium, the state had only $2 million set aside for anti-smoking programs, and much of that went to the classroom-based programs such as the ones the Hutchinson center study said don't work. "We didn't have a lot else going on because we didn't have the funds," Health Department spokesman Tim Church said. The new money includes $2.5 million for an anti-tobacco drive aimed at fifth- through ninth-graders and $5.3 million for a media campaign, with TV and radio ads targeted at youths. There's also $1.2 million set aside to study whether the state's efforts are actually working. Selecky said the state got comments from children to make sure the anti-tobacco ads would be effective. "What you see playing on TV and radio worked with kids in Washington state," she said. Selecky said much of the state's program is patterned after initiatives in California, Massachusetts, Florida and Oregon. Youth tobacco-use rates have dropped substantially in states such as those that have "comprehensive" programs, advocates say. Selecky said the state is also working with communities to target programs that would serve specific cities and towns in Washington. Meanwhile, the state's public-health community praised Locke for requesting $30 million over the next two years for tobacco-control efforts. "I think that the (Hutchinson center) study only reinforces what the public-health community already knows," Dr. Robert Jaffe of the Washington State Medical Association said in a statement. "That it takes a comprehensive, sustainable program . . . in other words, a program like the one started in Washington state this year." Jaffe said Oregon is a good model for how a program in Washington could work. In data released by that state earlier this month, 41 percent fewer Oregon eighth-graders smoke now than four years ago -- a decrease nearly double the national average, said the Washington Alliance for Tobacco Control and Children's Health. Keeping youths from smoking is crucial, because habits formed in grade school and high school often last a lifetime, researchers say. The federal government spends about $50 billion each year in smoking-related health care costs. In 1997, one death in five in Washington state was from a tobacco-related illness, according to the Health Department.

<< Prev	CIGoutlet.NET News Home	Next >>