Who says etiquette’s gone up in smoke?

TO: Members, Maine Legislature Health and Human Services Committee

FROM: I. Letumhack, CEO, Hookum Young Tobacco Co.

RE: Thanks for your recent vote by your committee to cut tobacco control funds in Maine by $1 million

Dear Folks,

Your recent decision to cut future money Maine uses for tobacco control and cessation efforts by $1 million each year was just what my company needs to help us addict more Mainers and keep those we already have wriggling like fish on a nicotine hook.

Maine has been a pain in my butts ever since the national tobacco settlement started sending it about $45 million a year. You do-gooders up there have actually been using some of the tobacco settlement money to help smokers quit! You were supposed to be like many other states, and use that money for roads, and tourist attractions, Medicaid payments, prisoner rehab, golf courses, etc., anything but anti-smoking efforts.

But nooooo. Instead, Maine was actually spending a bit more than the minimum recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for tobacco control in your state, more than $14 million a year. You were best in the nation at smoking-reduction initiatives. And what really frosts us is that all of this was actually working; smoking rates in Maine were dropping, and you have the lowest teen smoking rates in the country. Now, folks, we can’t have that, and I am glad you have seen the light. You were under a lot of budgetary pressure, you needed some money, that big fat pile of tobacco dollars was just sitting there up to no good, and I am glad you took some of it.

I don’t want you to worry your pretty Maine heads and have second thoughts. Forget that other states have found when you spend less money on tobacco control, smoking rates go back up, especially among teenagers. Ignore the fact that Maine will get about $216 million in tobacco-related revenues (cigarette taxes and tobacco settlement dollars) this year but spend only about 6 percent of it trying to reduce smoking. Your smokers won’t think that amounts to a rip-off as long as they don’t know, and I won’t tell them if you won’t.

There are a few other things I also don’t want you to worry about (and if any of these things make you a tad anxious, why, just light up a cigarette and let that nicotine relax your jangling neurons):

. That we tobacco companies spend more than $74 million a year (2003 figures) marketing cigarettes in Maine. That’s only about five times more money spent urging Mainers to smoke than your state spends helping them not to smoke, a darn good ratio if you ask me. What is $74 million among friends, after all. And, oh, don’t worry that tobacco company marketing spending goes up every year – maybe you will catch up some other year.

. That 1,700 Maine teenagers become regular smokers every year, or that about 27,000 Maine kids currently under the age of 18 will ultimately die prematurely of cigarette-related disease. Don’t think of them as victims of a drug more addictive than heroin and seductive advertising aimed at youths; think of them as a revenue source. We do! Same with that 17 percent of Maine high school students who already smoke, bless their little hearts (and lungs, if you know what I mean).

. That if you raid the Fund for a Healthy Maine (which pays for those tobacco control dollars) you are establishing a precedent other legislators can more easily follow in future years. Let ’em, I say! Think of tobacco money as Pandora’s Bank; once opened, never closed, and if a few bad things escape as a consequence, not to worry. You’ve got tough choices to make and bills to pay now.

. Don’t worry that future smokers cost your state more money down the road. Never mind that with all of Maine finally starting to think about getting healthier, in part to control skyrocketing health care costs, now is just when you should put more money into efforts to get Mainers unhooked, not less. That kind of forward thinking is just distracting.

. That the original intent of the national tobacco settlement, and Maine law covering use of settlement dollars, was to use the money in ways that helped reduce smoking rates.

After all, cutting a million bucks now is no big deal because in 2008 the tobacco control budget is supposed to get some new money from the tobacco settlement and Bangor racino taxes. Just ignore the facts that Maine’s tobacco control dollars have been cut in the past, and the tobacco control budget has been flat funded for the past five years, which amounts to another cut after inflation. Never mind those additional funds in 2008 (if the dollars ever materialize and don’t get also get raided) will just put the tobacco control dollars back to the level they should be at in the first place.

Don’t worry that if you are standing still in tobacco control funding and efforts, in the face of $15 billion in tobacco marketing in America every year you are falling behind. That’s what life in the slow lane means, for gosh sakes; you stand still and we blow right past you in the race for current and future cigarette customers.

You have enough to worry about; you are a legislator, for goodness sake, and the choices you have to make are brutal. Just leave Maine teenagers and smokers to us, and spend your money on other things than those folks. We’ll take great care of them, just as we always have.

And thanks again.

Erik Steele, D.O., a physician in Bangor, is chief medical officer of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region.