Legislators are chided for slashing antismoking funds for teens and not helping adults to quit.
By LISA GREENE
Published November 14, 2003
TAMPA - The two cowboys on the billboard ride silhouetted against the sunset, just like the Marlboro Man, but with an antismoking twist. Says one to the other: "I miss my lung, Bob."
Strong messages like this are what Florida needs, but the state is failing dismally in its efforts to help smokers stop, one of the state's top smoking-cessation experts said Thursday.
"The bottom line is that Florida has ignored its current adult smokers," said psychologist Thomas Brandon, director of the Tobacco Research and Intervention Program at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute.
Brandon criticized legislators for slashing the state's nationally recognized teen prevention program this year from $39-million to $1-million. He also said there should be more money for both the state's tobacco hotline for people who want to quit and counseling and cessation aids, such as nicotine patches and gum.
Brandon spoke Thursday at a Moffitt symposium for journalists about lung cancer, the nation's biggest cancer killer. About 155,000 Americans die from lung cancer every year.
Overall, Brandon said a good tobacco control program would have five stars, with one star each for such areas as teen prevention, relapse programs for adults and adult quitting programs. The score he gave Florida: 11/2 arms of one star.
"We simply must treat tobacco dependence as the addiction that it is," Brandon said.
The state Health Department plans to ask legislators to increase funding for antismoking programs next year, said spokeswoman Lindsay Hodges. Gov. Jeb Bush also has said he wants the teen prevention funds restored.
But Hodges said the department is working hard with the money that it has.
The department "continues its effort to educate citizens and encourage healthy behaviors and healthy lifestyles," she said.
After the funding cut this year, Dr. John O. Agwunobi, state secretary of health, put together $4-million worth of antismoking programs, Hodges said.
That includes a $750,000 federal grant that funds the Clean Indoor Air Act Office, which enforces new workplace smoking rules, and a $1-million health education program that targets chronic disease but has a "tobacco component."
Also Thursday at Moffitt, molecular epidemiologist Jong Park said researchers are studying genetic differences to help predict which smokers are more likely to develop lung cancer.
About 10 to 15 percent of smokers develop lung cancer. (Many others develop other lung problems and heart disease, and are at higher risk for other types of cancer.) But people rarely develop lung cancer symptoms until late in the disease, when it is virtually incurable.
If doctors could tell who is at higher risk, those people could be screened more often and targeted with more programs to quit, Park said.
Part of the answer lies in differences in how people metabolize specific chemicals in tobacco smoke, Park said. One such chemical is transformed by a series of enzymes to a dangerous carcinogen. Studies show that smokers with a high level of one of those enzymes are more likely to develop cancer.
Similarly, studies indicate that smokers are at higher risk if they have low levels of an enzyme that can repair cell damage from the same carcinogen. Park hopes that further study will help doctors use such enzymes as screening tools.
America's deadliest cancer
About 164,000 Americans were diagnosed with lung cancer in 2000.
More than 155,000 Americans died of lung cancer in 2000.
About 15 percent of lung cancer patients survive five years after diagnosis.
Ten to 15 percent of smokers develop lung cancer.
About one-third of all U.S. cancer deaths are linked to smoking.
