Chances are high that many of our friends and family members are vowing to quit smoking in the new year and that’s good because tobacco remains the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. Tobacco is responsible for half of its users dying.
Indiana’s smoking rate is 50 percent higher than the national average and an annual tobacco-related death toll that exceeds 11,000 each year.
In Marion County, more than 150,000 of our neighbors are smokers and an estimated 46,000 people in Marion County are living with a serious tobacco-related illness, like COPD and heart disease.
Tobacco use remains a Hoosier epidemic that we can end and efforts to do so are broadly supported, even by smokers. When tobacco users are surveyed, 70 percent report that they want to quit smoking. They need help.
That’s especially true for African-American smokers who use menthol cigarettes at higher rates than other smokers, thanks in large part to decades of targeted marketing from tobacco companies. Though menthol cigarettes are harder to quit, it hasn’t kept African-American smokers in Indiana from trying.
According to 2017 data from the Indiana State Department of Health, 90 percent of African-American smokers said they wanted to quit and nearly 75 percent tried to quit smoking in the last year.
So, what are we doing to help people quit in Indiana? Unfortunately, not much. Indiana’s cigarette tax rate is one of the lowest in the country and we spend far too little on prevention and cessation programs.
We can change that in 2019.
A $2 per pack increase in the cigarette tax — which the Raise it for Health campaign is calling for in 2019 — would give many people the push they need to finally quit, helping an estimated 70,000 people quit smoking. It would protect 60,000 kids from ever picking up the deadly product and produce significant new revenue that we could invest in long-neglected health programs.
The Indiana Cancer Control Plan has laid out a goal that lawmakers and Gov. Holcomb should consider adopting: reduce Indiana’s adult smoking rate to 18 percent by 2020. It’s aggressive and it’s doable, but we need to act now.
We know people need help and we know that we can help tens of thousands of people lead smoke-free lives if we raise the cigarette tax. So, let’s make 2019 the year that we Raise it for Health.
Dr. Frank P. Lloyd, Jr. is a retired surgical oncologist and former Marion County Coroner. He is an Indiana board member of the American Cancer Society and a member of 100 Black Men of Indianapolis
