Good news and bad: Adult smoking rates down by half, but less progress seen with younger smokers
By Terry Rindfleisch of the Tribune staff
Dr. Michael Fiore finds good news in the fight againt tobbaco use even though smoking still remains the single most preventable cause of death in our society.
Fiore, founder and director of the University of Wisconsin Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention since 1992, said adult smoking rates in the United States have been cut in half from 43 percent in 1964 to 22 percent to today.
“We’ve made incredible success in 40 years,” Fiore said. “Cutting the rates in half rivals the discovery of antibiotics. It is the single most important public health achievement of our time -- but we still have a long way to go.
“We have 45 million smokers in the nation and 800,000 smokers in Wisconsin, and half will be killed related to their tobacco use, losing 13 years of their lives,” he said.
Progress has been made in cutting the use of tobacco in every age group except young adults where the rates are 25 to 30 percent, he said.
“It’s the result of the epidemic youth tobacco use in the 1990s when the tobbaco industry barraged kids with advertising and the Joe Camel campaign,” Fiore said. “Now, they are hooked in their 20s.”
“It’s the reason we cannot give up on high school and college-age smokers because they will become life-long smokers if we don’t do more to help them,” he said.
Fiore will be in La Crosse on Thursday, Dec. 9, as part of the Healthy Living Together project on smoking sponsored by the La Crosse Tribune and WXOW-TV 19. He will speak to leaders of Teens Against Tobacco Use (TATU) and La Crosse area physicians and health-care professionals. Fiore will give a presentation at 1:30 p.m. in the Cleary and Friends Alumni Center on the UW-L campus, which is open to the public and business leaders.
Brenda Rooney, medical director of community and preventive care services at Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center, said she is concerned that if college-age adults are not successful in their attempts to quit smoking, then there would be an increase in overall smoking rates in the future.
In 2000, the La Crosse Area Health Initiative worked with Viterbo University, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and Western Wisconsin Technical College in a “Quit & Win Contest” to sign up students in a stop smoking con test.
The health initiative used significant prizes, such as a $1,500 voucher for travel anywhere in the continental United States, as an incentive for students to quit. Rooney said the program was not successful as only 12 percent still were not smoking after six months.
“College students are away from home, and they don’t want to be told what to do,” Rooney said. “They don’t want to quit, and they don’t think they are addicted and believe they can quit whenever they want to.
“Not much has been done to be successful with college students, and we need to more,” Rooney said.
Gary Gilmore, professor and director of UW-L’s community health program, said he is seeing a slight increase in tobacco use among high school students. More than 24 percent of female teenagers and 22 percent of male teens smoke in Wisconsin.
Those age 18 to 24 years made up 35 percent of all Wisconsin smokers. About 23 percent of high school students smoke in Wisconsin, slightly higher than the national average. But the number of Wisconsin teen-agers smoking has dropped from about 33 percent in 2000 to 23 percent in 2003.
A U.S. government report, Healthy People, has set a goal to cut smoking rates to 15 percent in this decade.
“I don’t think we will ever get below 20 percent,” Rooney said. “That’s unless we make tobacco an illegal drug, and there’s not much support for that.”
Terry Rindfleisch can be reached at trindfleisch@lacrossetribune.com or (608) 791-8227.
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