State snuffing out smoking

One in five cigarette smokers in Spokane County and across Washington has managed to snuff out the habit since 1999, sending adult smoking rates falling by more than 20 percent, state officials announced Wednesday.

Washington state’s rate dropped to 17.8 percent in 2005, posting the fifth-lowest rate in the nation. That’s down from 22.4 percent in 1999. In Spokane, the rate was 21.5 percent last year, down from 27 percent in 1999, according to statistics from the national Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey.

Nationwide, the rate of adult smokers was 20.6 percent in 2005.

The Washington decline translates to 205,000 fewer smokers statewide and a savings of $1.8 billion in future health care costs, according to state leaders who gathered at a Seattle press conference.

“We’re helping smokers put out their cigarettes for the last time, and that means a healthier Washington,” Secretary of Health Mary Selecky said in a statement.

State and local officials credited a targeted $28 million-a-year Tobacco Prevention and Control Program with spurring the decline.

“It’s very significant,” said Dr. Kim Thorburn, health officer for the Spokane Regional Health District. “It’s good evidence of the hard work public health has been doing to counteract the trend and ‘Big Tobacco.’ “

Although Spokane’s rate has fallen significantly overall since 1999, it has stalled in the past few years, Thorburn noted. It fell just 1.4 percent between 2004 and 2005, down from 21.8 percent to 21.5 percent.

“We’re chipping away a little more slowly,” Thorburn said. “In some places, there remains an attitude that smoking is a right and, by golly, I’m going to keep smoking.”

Particularly worrisome are local figures that show that 18.9 percent of pregnant women in Spokane County smoke, compared with about 10 percent statewide, Thorburn noted.

Passage of the Clean Indoor Air Act last year diverted staff members’ prevention work, but Thorburn said they’ve resumed education, outreach and intervention efforts.

“I have to believe that we will figure out the right message to reach people,” she said.

Washington’s rate has fallen much faster than the national rate, statistics show. Between 2002 and 2005, the percentage of adult smokers in Washington declined by 17.2 percent, compared with 11.2 percent nationwide.

Across the state, however, rates ranged wildly, from a high of 30.4 percent in tiny Whakiakum County to a low of 10.1 percent in Walla Walla County. Some of the highest rates in the state were posted in nearby Ferry County, 28.6 percent, Stevens County, 28.3 percent, and Pend Oreille County, 24.9 percent.

Locally and across the country, smoking is strongly associated with low income and lack of education, figures show. In 2005, 30 percent of people who earned less than $15,000 a year or who had less than a high school education smoked nationwide.

That same year, 15.3 percent of those earning $50,000 a year or more and 10.9 percent of college graduates reported smoking.

“What we need to apply are the lessons we’ve learned in dealing with other kinds of addiction, because it is an addiction,” Thorburn said. “Everybody is not always ready to quit, but everybody is ready at some time.”