A new report finds most states spend a small fraction of their tobacco settlement and tax income on smoking prevention and cessation. Congress keeps cutting the ACA’s Prevention and Public Health Fund. An Institute of Medicine Committee recommends ways to assure we stop making these short-sighted cuts.
Addiction & Substance Abuse
State tobacco prevention funds going up in smoke, threatening declines in smoking rates
By Kim Krisberg Public health vs. tobacco. It’s a David and Goliath kind of story. The kind in which the good guys win and everyone sleeps a little sounder knowing that the bigger, richer guys don’t hold all the power. Of course, the story isn’t so cut and dry. While public health has been slowly […]
The World Health Organization has declared that “tobacco taxes are the most effective way to reduce tobacco use, especially among young people and the poor,” but Slate’s James Ledbetter points out that in the US, there’s a portion of the smoking population that keeps on paying them: Over the last decade or so, several states […]
Senators John McCain and Tom Coburn have released a report on “100 Stimulus Projects that Give Taxpayers the Blues.” Their introduction rails against “torrential, misdirected government spending,” and short descriptions of the 100 projects singled out for ridicule are evidently supposed to disgust readers. What disgusted me, though, was an apparent lack of respect for […]