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New York – I’m a non-smoker. I believe that cigarettes have a destructive impact and that the tobacco industry perpetrated a willful, harmful fraud against the American public. I’m a liberal. I subscribe to the public health concerns around smoking and am concerned about the overall societal costs for caring for those damaged by the habit. I fully believe these concerns demand us to take action. Yet,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], I’m unsure about the latest smoking ban put forth by the City Council.[link widoczny dla zalogowanych].
It’s not often I agree with Dan Halloran, the conservative City Council member who most recently made news with trumped up charges against city workers after the December blizzard as part of an ideological, right-wing smear campaign against organized labor. But on the Brian Lehrer Show on Friday,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], he and progressive Council Member Robert Jackson made compelling arguments as they explained what made them “odd bedfellows” in opposing the Council action to ban smoking in public parks,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych],[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], plazas, beaches and boardwalks.
After years of decline,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], smoking rates in New Jersey are on the rise again. In its recently released State of Tobacco Control report for 2010, the American Lung Association says the number of adults who smoke in New Jersey rose last year to 15.8 percent, up from 14.8 percent a year earlier. The report also showed the smoking rate among New Jersey high school students increasing to 17 percent, up from 14.3 percent. The data was culled from federal surveys through the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention that were done in 2009. Such numbers would seemingly provide reason for the state to expand its anti-smoking and smoking cessation programs.
But, because of the $11 billion deficit in the state budget last year, New Jersey slashed its funding for such programs in July from $7.6 million to just $600,000. The dramatic cuts came even though the state still brought in about $1 billion in 2010 from taxes on cigarettes and a 1998 legal settlement with the big U.S. tobacco companies, and despite the state having a near total ban on indoor workplace smoking. According to McGoldrick, for every $1 spent by government on anti-tobacco efforts,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], at least $2 to $3 is saved in health care costs: “These are evidence-based programs that have shown results,” he said.
“Ultimately, these programs pay for themselves.” Oddly,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], while Jacobs, Kazimir and others credit that law with protecting the public health in New Jersey by ensuring that fewer New Jerseyans are exposed to secondhand smoke and by taking away some of the allure of smoking, they also acknowledge that the law may have made it easier for legislators and the governor to dismiss the value of funding anti-smoking programs. Smoking is banned in virtually every public indoor place in New Jersey,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], so why is there a need to spend millions on anti-smoking programs? “That’s exactly what I’ve heard some legislators say,” Jacobs said.