Media Clipping – September 23, 2007, The Chronicle-Herald

$1 billion a year up in smoke

Report: Progress being made but 22% of Nova Scotians still puffing

BY John Gillis, Health Reporter

Anti-smoking campaigns have had a real impact in Nova Scotia but the habit still costs people in the province close to $1 billion each year, say the authors of a new report.

Only 22 per cent of Nova Scotians smoked in 2006, down from 30 per cent in 2000, but it will take 15 to 20 years to see reduced health costs and lower productivity losses, said Ron Colman, executive director of GPI Atlantic, which prepared the report titled The Cost of Tobacco Use in Nova Scotia.

The $20,000 report, commissioned by the Canadian Cancer Society's Nova Scotia division, updates a similar one done in 2000.

Mr. Colman said the province has shown leadership in implementing a comprehensive tobacco strategy including tobacco tax increases, smoke-free legislation, smoking cessation programs and social marketing campaigns.

"We have actually seen real progress on all the fronts we were hoping for action on seven years ago," he said at a news conference in Halifax on Wednesday.

The drop in the overall smoking rate, the fact fewer people permit smoking in their homes and a sharp decline in the percentage of children who are regularly exposed to second-hand smoke all bode well for the future.

But the damage already done by Nova Scotians' pre-vious tobacco use is actually leading to mounting costs.

The direct health costs attributable to tobacco use in the province were estimated at $171.3 million in 2005 — the latest year for which figures are available — a slight increase over the 2000 estimate.

The costs remain high because lung cancer, heart disease and other ill effects of smoking continue to appear even after people have quit.

Those direct costs alone eat up all of the $163.6 million in federal and provincial tobacco tax revenue collected in 2005-06.

But the societal costs are much greater, Mr. Colman said.

An estimated 1,753 Nova Scotians died in 2005 as a result of smoking. The lost productivity due to short- and long-term smoking-related illness and premature death of working Nova Scotians was pegged at $526 million that year. Add the $263.6 million that employers rack up in lost productivity from current smokers who miss work and take frequent unauthorized breaks and the total cost to society is just shy of $1 billion each year.

Mr. Colman and Maureen Summers, executive director of the cancer society's Nova Scotia division, called on the government to double its investment in the provincial tobacco strategy to about $5 per capita, or $4.7 million.

"We have much work to do," Ms. Summers said. "We have to remember that 1,753 Nova Scotians die from tobacco-related diseases and these deaths are preventable, as are the associated costs to Nova Scotia."

She said a bigger investment in the tobacco strategy might help reach that last 22 per cent of people who continue to smoke and would represent only a fraction of the revenue collected from tobacco taxes.

Steve Machat, manager of tobacco control for the provincial Health Promotion and Protection Department, said the decline in smoking rates has levelled off after a steep drop in the early part of the decade. But he noted the last reported rates don't reflect the impact of strengthened smoking bans and restrictions on in-store tobacco displays.

( jgillis@herald.ca)