US: CAMC Asked to Support $1 Cigarette Tax Increase

Source from:  Gazette Mail 01/28/2016

A health advocate and Charleston resident has called on West Virginia's largest hospital system to support a $1 increase on the state's cigarette tax, as part of a comprehensive campaign aimed at driving down the state's smoking rate.

Perry Bryant, who retired as director of West Virginians for Affordable Health Care, spoke to Charleston Area Medical Center's board of directors Wednesday morning.

Bryant is proposing the hospital support a $1-per-pack increase in the state's cigarette tax, which is higher than the 45-cent-per-pack increase that Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin proposed during his State of the State address.

Bryant said a 45-cent-per-pack increase would not be enough to persuade young people not to start smoking, or to get current smokers to quit.

"You all know we lead the country in tobacco utilization," Bryant said. "It is a crisis in our state and we need a comprehensive proposal not just to raise taxes but to drive down tobacco utilization in our state."

West Virginia's smoking rate is the highest in the nation: 26.7 percent of state residents smoke, according to 2014 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data. The state's smoking rate has not declined significantly over the past two decades, despite a marked decline in surrounding states and across the nation. Between 1995 and 2010, the daily smoking rates of adults in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee dropped to below 20 percent of the population, and below 15 percent of the population in Virginia and Pennsylvania. West Virginia's rate never fell below 20 percent during that period, and even increased between 2005 and 2010 to nearly the level recorded in 1995.

Bryant is asking CAMC and other hospitals across the state to support a three-month campaign to encourage residents to quit smoking.

The campaign would include the hospitals, as well as Primary Care Association and the American Cancer Society, suspending their promotional media campaigns for a month before the tax increase takes effect and for a month after. Instead, a coordinated media campaign aimed at getting people to quit smoking would run during that time frame.

During the same three months, hospitals would encourage their doctors and nurses to counsel patients to quit smoking, and would require insurance carriers to cover all FDA-approved smoking cessation methods.

Bryant said he has not yet approached other hospital boards or agencies about his proposal.

The CAMC board did not decide on the proposal, but instead referred it to the Kanawha Coalition for Community Health Improvement to follow up on.

"The reason for that is that this really involves all of the other hospitals in the county as (Bryant) recommended as well as the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department," Brenda Grant, CAMC chief strategy officer, said in making the recommendation to the board.

The coalition is made up of area hospitals as well as agencies like the United Way and the Charleston Area Alliance.

Dave Ramsey, CAMC's president and CEO, said referring the proposal to the coalition was the way to go because the coalition includes representatives from 12 area health agencies.

"Everybody in health care is more than supportive of how to find ways to reduce the number of people that smoke; that's probably the number one health issue in the country, certainly in our area along with the whole drug-abuse issue," Ramsey said.

Ramsey didn't say whether he or the hospital supports a $1 increase in the tobacco tax.

"We may do that at some point, but I think working through the coalition so it's not just the hospital - it could be other agencies in the coalition or other community health organizations is the way to go," Ramsey said.

Ramsey said it was too early to comment on whether the hospital would support a media campaign.

"We'd be looking for a little more input on that," he said. Enditem