Washington, Idaho show decline in smoking rates

Smoking rates dropped again in Washington and Idaho in 2006, continuing a gradual, steady decline in the number of adults who light up, state and national surveys showed.

In Washington, the rate has fallen to a new low of 17 percent, while in Idaho, the percentage of smokers declined to 16.8 percent, according to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The states continue to post rates among the lowest in the nation, with Idaho sliding into the third spot after Utah, which boasts a rate of 9.8 percent, and California, where 14.9 percent of adults smoke. Connecticut and Washington remain in a tie, with 17 percent.

Kentucky had the nation’s highest rate of adult smokers in 2006, at 28.5 percent.

In the Northwest, the rate is down only slightly from 2005, when it hit 17.6 percent in Washington and 17.9 percent in Idaho. The real measure of progress is that it has fallen by nearly a quarter in Washington since 1999, when it topped 22.4 percent, and more than 20 percent in Idaho, where it stood at 21.5 percent, health officials said. Nationally, smoking rates have fallen from 22.8 percent in 1999 to 20.1 percent in 2006, the CDC reported.

“It’s those little signposts on the road that make sure you stay on the road,” said Mike Boysun, an epidemiologist with the Washington’s Tobacco Prevention and Control program. “We’re looking at broad trends; we’re not going to freak out over a small year-to-year change.”

That attitude was good news in Spokane, where figures showed an increase from 21.5 percent in 2005 to 24 percent in 2006. That pegs Spokane County with the seventh-highest smoking rate in the state, somewhere between Pend Oreille County, where 28.7 percent of adults smoke, and Adams County, where 10.4 percent light up.

Health officials cautioned, however, that the county survey data is imprecise, with a possible margin of error of up to 3 percent. The BRFSS survey included 1,194 Spokane residents, including 435 men and 759 women.

“When you look at that, our rates have stayed the same,” said Scott Roy, tobacco program coordinator with the Spokane Regional Health District.

New rates for North Idaho counties weren’t available, a spokesman for the Panhandle Health District said Wednesday.

Still worrisome are figures that show that people with low incomes and limited education tend to smoke at higher rates than the rest of the population, Roy said. In Idaho and Washington, about 30 percent of those who earn less than $25,000 a year and have less than a high school education smoke. That compares with about 11 percent of those with incomes above $50,000, and 7 to 8 percent of those who are college graduates.

By next year, Roy hopes those state and county rates will fall even further, thanks to a targeted new quit-smoking effort hosted by the health district. Since May, 78 people have enrolled in the six-month program called “Quit and Win.”

It includes nicotine replacement therapy, free classes and incentives like gym memberships and the chance to win a trip to Hawaii. So far, 46 people have remained tobacco-free, he said.

“If you can run quit rates at 20 percent, those are good numbers,” Roy said. “If we can wind up in November with anything close to 50 percent, those are really good numbers.”