Everyone has heard Ben Franklin’s time-honored saying: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” More than 200 years ago, our leaders knew that prevention pays. The American Heart Association calls on the Legislature and Gov. Baldacci to listen to Ben Franklin’s sage advice and pass a meaningful tobacco tax and continue to fund programs that keep Maine healthy.

We believe that Mr. Franklin’s saying should be updated to: “$1.50 worth of prevention is worth $438 million of cure.”

A $1.50 increase in Maine’s cigarette tax would save Maine $438 million in lifetime health costs and countless lives. Almost 10,000 fewer Maine residents would die from tobacco use if the price was raised enough so that they quit smoking or didn’t start. This does not even take into account the lives saved and future costs avoided by using the tobacco tax to maintain necessary health programs.

The American Heart Association’s mission is to reduce disability and death from cardiovascular diseases and stroke. Many of those who could be saved by a $1.50 price increase would die from cardiovascular diseases and stroke.

Maine has a proud tradition of doing what is necessary to reduce smoking – and it has worked. Perhaps the most important for the long-term health of Maine residents is the decline in youth smoking. The fewer youth who begin this deadly habit, the fewer adults who will end up devastated by its effects.

Maine’s youth smoking rate has dropped by almost 50 percent since 1997. This is great news. We can’t point to just one program or policy that has caused this drop. Maine has banned smoking in almost all indoor public and workplaces. Maine’s Tobacco Helpline (800) 207-1230 is a model for other states. We work hard to make sure stores don’t sell cigarettes to children. The Healthy Maine Partnerships work tirelessly, with limited resources, to educate residents of their local communities about the hazards of smoking.

At one time, we had the highest tobacco tax in the nation and used pricing strategies to help reduce smoking. All of these measures have contributed to this fantastic decline and all need to be strengthened.

But we still have work to do.

Twenty percent of Maine’s high school students are smokers.

Our current tax of $1 makes us the second-lowest in the Northeast and our bordering Canadian provinces. We are no longer doing our best to decrease smoking. We are falling short. We cannot become complacent.

We need to keep tobacco unappealing to kids – education helps, limiting access helps, but those strategies have to be coupled with price increases in order to be effective. Youth are very price-sensitive. They may have more “pocket money” than some of us did when we were kids, but that does not mean that they want to throw their money away. If a pack of cigarettes costs as much money as a movie ticket, a T-shirt at Old Navy or two packs are as expensive as a DVD, youth will choose to avoid tobacco.

Our legislators are toiling away in Augusta, searching under every rock for funds to support Maine’s vital services. Most of them don’t want to cut necessary, life-saving programs that our most vulnerable residents rely on – such as the drugs for the elderly program and MaineCare. They don’t have to. A $1.50 increase in a tobacco tax would generate $80 million. Mainers have time and time again shown that they support increases in tobacco taxes when the proceeds are used for health purposes.

Raising the tobacco tax is just good for Maine. There is no reason to make cuts to necessary prevention and health care programs when the option of a $1.50 tobacco tax exists.

Dr. N. Burgess Record is medical director of the Western Maine Center for Heart Health at Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington and director of Prevention and Outreach for the Central Maine Heart and Vascular Institute at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. Dennise D. Whitley is the director of Advocacy-Maine for the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.

Copy the Story Link