Official: Target Tobacco First

Source from:  By Carrie May Boomerang Staff Writer  07/11/2007

Preventing early tobacco use is one of the best ways to prevent drug and alcohol abuse later in life, a representative from the Wyoming Department of Health said to health care providers Monday. "If a young person does not abuse alcohol or drugs when they are younger than 18, there is a strong likelihood that they never will," said Rodger McDaniel, deputy director of the mental health and substance abuse division of the Wyoming Department of Health, to the Wyoming Healthcare Commission meeting Monday at the University of Wyoming. "More importantly, there is a statistically significantly connection between early use of tobacco and later dependency on alcohol and abuse and addiction on other drugs," McDaniel said. "The key, then, is to promote tobacco prevention among youth." Over the past eight years, McDaniel said, there have been significant drops in teen substance abuse in Wyoming. Since 1999, lifetime tobacco use among Wyoming teens has declined by one-third, lifetime alcohol use has dropped by 20 percent and the same is true of binge drinking. In that same period of time, most use and abuse statistics for Wyoming adults have remained constant. To prevent even greater drops, McDaniel suggested that Wyoming implement higher tobacco taxes and statewide smoking bans. "Unless we can make progress in environmental changes, I do not expect the money that we are now investing in tobacco programs will do much to change (youth tobacco use) trends," McDaniel said. "I think we have reached a point of diminishing returns." Healthcare costs associated with substance abuse, McDaniel said, manifest statewide in Wyoming's public and child welfare systems, the criminal justice system and public health services and also significantly impact numbers of serious accidents, domestic violence incidents, suicide rates and poverty rates statewide. All this, McDaniel said, could be affected - if not prevented - by individual substance abuse treatment. "Diseases of addiction and mental disorders are as preventable and treatable as many other diseases, if treated appropriately and timely," he said. As significant as Wyoming's problems with substance abuse and mental health are, Wyoming is ahead of the curve when compared other states, he said. As recently as November, the National Conference of State Legislators issued a report that concluded that most states, with respect to substance abuse and addiction, have significantly overlooked problems. "That is not the case in Wyoming," McDaniel said. Since 2002, the Legislature has invested time and resources to curb statewide substance abuse. Twenty-three Wyoming counties have citizens' advisory committees on underage drinking and 16 have methamphetamine initiatives. "Before 2002, we didn't know we had a problem and today we wonder why it hasn't been solved," McDaniel said. To prevent substance abuse and untreated mental illness from continuing to be major social problems in Wyoming, McDaniel suggests implementing programs that demand improvements in treatment and prevention, identifying best practices and programs and being faithful to them, transparently measuring program outcomes and providing community-based leadership, particularly among young people. "I am persuaded that our long-term efforts to reduce drug abuse and addiction have to begin with programs and policies that target youth," McDaniel said. "The other part of that is that those policies and practices should target tobacco prevention first." Enditem