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Health Advocates Decry Gov's Plan to Cut $20M From Maine's Anti-Smoking Fund

AUGUSTA, Maine - Included in Gov. Paul LePage's just-released budget proposal is a $20 million cut to the "Fund for a Healthy Maine." LePage says he wants to use the savings to pay for other programs that he says are designed to improve health outcomes.

But the Maine Public Health Association says the cuts will result in a major setback for the state's smoking cessation programs.

By all accounts, Maine has done a commendable job in reducing the smoking rate since 1997. But Gov. Paul LePage's plan to draw down $20 million from the Fund For a Healthy Maine could set those efforts back dramatically, according to several state health care groups.

"When we see proposed cuts to our public health infrastructure, where organizations like Healthy Maine Partnerships would virtually be eliminated, we get very nervous," says Tina Pettingill.

Pettingill is executive director of the Maine Public Health Association. She says programs such as Healthy Maine Partnerships have provided measurable benefits to the state over the last 18 years. In 1997, Maine's teenage smoking rate was the highest in the nation. But Pettingill says those numbers have since dropped by 67 percent.

"There's actually lots of data, not only from Maine but from other states and throughout the country, around prevention education, prevention programs and what we call return on investment for the Healthy Maine Partnerships and programs like that," Pettingill says. "Actually, in Maine, it's the highest in the nation. It's somewhere around $7.50 return on an investment for every $1 that is spent."

"If you view these tobacco programs like a vaccine you have to continue those programs," says Dr. Dora Anne Mills.  Dr. Mills, the former director for the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, oversaw the expansion of many of the anti-smoking programs under two previous governors.

"And when those programs have dropped off in other states, the smoking rates go back up," Dr. Mills says. "This is such a very addictive drug - as addictive in some ways as heroin."

Mills says the state chose to use money from tobacco taxes and tobacco company settlement funds to target smoking in Maine. Health care advocates predict that the loss of $20 million over two years would decimate the cessation programs. And Dr. Mills says that couldn't come at a worse time.

"Once these kids and young adults become addicted to tobacco, it is extremely hard to get them to quit," she says. "So the time to immunize them is during their childhood adolescence and young adulthood. And these tobacco programs do that, and do that very successfully."

At the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, spokesman David Sorensen says the agency's staff is confident that even with the budget cuts, the state would be able to maintain successful smoking cessation efforts. He says the administration felt it was appropriate to use the monies from the Fund For A Healthy Maine to improve health outcomes for all Mainers.

"We want to take some of those funds and put them toward higher reimbursement rates for primary care providers to improve access to primary care for people on Medicaid," Sorensen says.

LePage has proposed eliminating almost 40 positions at the Maine Center for Disease Control - a cutback in personnel that worries Tina Pettingill at the Maine Public Health Association.

But at state DHHS headquarters, David Sorensen said all of the positions were vacant and that no one at the CDC would be losing their jobs.