Anti-smoking program snuffed

BOISE – Legislative budget writers pulled the plug Tuesday on Idaho’s “Project Filter” anti-smoking media campaign and a program to help counties pay indigent smokers’ medical costs.

The two half-million-dollar programs were among an array of projects axed from the Millenium Fund budget for next year, as the majority on the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee cut back spending from the fund by more than half.

“In all honesty, we were surprised,” said Tom Shanahan, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Welfare. “It will impact our ability to mount an effective counter-marketing campaign in our tobacco-prevention program. We’re still evaluating what we’re going to do.”

Kootenai County Commissioner Gus Johnson said county taxpayers will have to make up for the loss of Millenium Fund allocations to counties. “We’ve got to pay the bills,” he said. “Now taxpayers have to pay because someone chooses to smoke, has an illness from it – you get to pay to take care of his health care costs.”

Idaho set up its Millenium Fund as a trust fund for millions from a nationwide tobacco settlement, with plans to spend the earnings each year on various anti-tobacco and health programs. But in 2003, lawmakers drained the trust fund to balance the state budget, so this year’s earnings are paltry.

A joint legislative committee that oversees the Millenium Fund and Gov. Dirk Kempthorne both recommended funding the usual $2 million-plus in projects next year, by dipping into the principal of the fund as well as its earnings. But the majority on JFAC disagreed.

“I just personally feel that we’ve broken into the fund, and if we continue to do that we will never have any more money than we have now,” said Sen. Patti Anne Lodge, R-Huston, who pushed for the drastically cut-back $700,000 budget.

Lodge opted to fund only $94,000 for Idaho State Police youth tobacco investigations, $336,000 for smoking-cessation classes and $270,000 for the Idaho Supreme Court’s youth courts.

The two largest projects left out were the Health and Welfare Department’s $500,000 tobacco counter-marketing campaign, and a $550,000 annual effort to subsidize counties’ costs for medical care for indigent people who suffer from smoking-related illnesses. Both projects had been funded each year since the Millenium Fund was set up in fiscal year 2001.

“It could hit a county pretty substantially,” said Dan Chadwick, head of the Idaho Association of Counties. “They’re still going to have to figure out how to pay for it.”

The governor and the joint legislative Millenium Fund committee had recommended paying $5,000 toward the counties’ $10,000 deductible per case for indigent medical care for smoking-related illnesses. In 2004, Kootenai County got more than $41,000 through that program. Benewah and Boundary counties got $5,000 apiece.

Johnson was angry about the cut. “Another $41,000 that we weren’t having to spend will have to be spent to take care of the medical needs for someone who chooses to smoke,” he said. “I don’t smoke, but I’m going to have to pay for the medical cost. That’s not fair. That’s why it was wonderful that those dollars did come in from the tobacco producers to the state to help pay for some of those costs.”

At Health and Welfare, the anti-tobacco media campaign is a key part of a $2 million-a-year tobacco prevention and control program. The overall program, like the media campaign theme, is called Project Filter.

“Tobacco use is probably the most preventable cause of death and disease in our nation,” Shanahan said. “About four people a day in Idaho die from smoking-related illnesses, so we do need an effective program.”

He added, “The program itself has been pretty successful.” The most recent Centers for Disease Control statistics on smoking showed Idaho at 18.9 percent smokers, below the national average of 22.1 percent.

“We’ve been going down steadily,” Shanahan said. “We’re at a 10-year low right now.”

The $500,000 from the Millenium Fund went entirely for the media campaign, he said, including production of television commercials, media buys, and other types of advertising.

“The media campaign is a key part,” Shanahan said. “That’s what spurs people to action. You get a good media campaign and people decide to do something about their smoking – it’s the nudge.”

Lodge won support for her budget plan from North Idaho committee members Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint; Rep. George Eskridge, R-Dover; and Rep. Dick Harwood, R-St. Maries.

Rep. Shirley Ringo, D-Moscow, voted against the plan and voted in favor of an alternative plan to fund the Millenium Fund committee’s full recommendation. That alternative plan won only five votes on the 20-member committee, with the four Democrats joined by Sen. Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, in supporting it.

To become law, the budget bill still needs approval from both houses and the governor’s signature.