The Moncton Times and Transcript - February 17, 2000
By Colin Kenny
How much do you think the Canadian government spends per capita on anti-tobacco initiatives? Well, if you guessed a paltry 66 cents, you're absolutely right.
Does it surprise you that the government spends only $20 million of the more than $2.25 billion it collects each year in tobacco tax revenue? These numbers speak of a half-hearted commitment to controlling tobacco addiction.
Health professionals, the people on the front lines, easily recognize the need for more money. That's why I plan to ask Parliament to raise $360 million a year to combat tobacco addiction among young Canadians, an increase over the $120 million I asked for over a year ago.
I am talking about imposing a levy on every cigarette sold in this country - three quarters of a cent a cigarette. You can say the tobacco companies would pay it, or you can say smokers would pay it. I don't care.
The money would be funneled through a new, independent institution, run by health experts, free from political manipulation. It would channel money to the local level to help get young people off the weed and prevent others from falling into the nicotine trap.
The Moncton area's share of $360 million annually would be in the neighbourhood of $1.4 million a year.
I'm not the only one who recognizes the need for substantial and stable funding to comb at tobacco addiction. I asked Dr. Denis Allard, medical officer of health for New Brunswick, what he thought of my proposed legislation. His response to me was most encouraging: "Smoking remains a very important cause of morbidity and mortality for New Brunswickers as it is for the rest of Canadians. Any initiative that would help fund more resources to devote to health programs aimed at reducing this unhealthy habit and at eliminating it in our population deserves our encouragement. Extra dollars could be put to good use in funding community projects to support smokers wanting to quit and to lobby and advise municipalities in the development of smoke-free policies."
We need these kinds of programs because 45,000 Canadians are dying from tobacco-related diseases every year, because the smoking rate among youth in places like California - which has a broad array of programs organized at the state, district, and local levels - is 11 percent, compared to 29 percent in Canada; because not long ago the situation was that 80 percent of Canadian smokers started before they were 18 - now 85 percent of them are getting started before they are 16. To my mind, the lungs of our kids are as valuable as the lungs of American kids.
The highly respected Atlanta Centre for Disease Control has developed a model to show what constitutes proper funding and allocation.
Based on a number of existing American programs, the Centre estimates that, in Canadian dollars, it should cost between $9 and $24 per capita to mount and sustain an effective anti-smoking campaign.
We are fighting against the tobacco companies' massively funded appeal to all those young smokers. The inadequately funded anti-smoking programs we currently have simply don't work.
Sen. Colin Kenny was the author of Bill S-13. The Tobacco Industry Responsibility Act.