PHOENIX — Arizona is one of the most effective states in the nation for fighting lung cancer and its costs, according to a new report.
WalletHub rated Arizona No. 9 overall when looking at various factors ranging from ways to keeping people from smoking to options available for those who contract the disease. Hawaii was at the top of the list; Missouri was at the bottom.
What helped Arizona’s overall ranking was the conclusion by the financial advice company that the state’s restrictions on where people can smoke are the best in the country. It was Arizona voters themselves, and not state lawmakers, who approved those restrictions.
The 2006 ballot measure makes most indoor establishments, ranging from offices to bars and restaurants, smoke-free areas. The law also requires hotels to designate at least half of their rooms as places where smoking is not allowed.
The study also found Arizona had the 11th-highest cigarette tax, a clear disincentive for people to start and a reason for smokers to quit.
That, too, is due largely to the same 2006 ballot measure. It raised the state tax on cigarettes by 82 cents a pack, bringing the current state levy to $2.
And an even earlier voter-approved measure helped Arizona rank second in the nation for the number of free programs available to help people quit. That was the 1994 initiative that also included a hike in tobacco taxes to pay for the anti-smoking efforts.
What dragged the state down to No. 9 was that WalletHub said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rated overall air quality here as the worst in the nation.
Bill Pfeifer, president of the American Lung Association of the Southwest, said the WalletHub study shows how much Arizona has done to combat lung cancer.
But more importantly, he said, it focuses public attention on the disease, attention he said has been missing.
“Frankly, lung cancer kind of became this orphan disease that people just didn’t want to talk about,” Pfeifer said. “People that develop lung cancer often didn’t want to talk about it because they felt like they brought it on themselves somehow.”
That lack of attention, he said, has meant a lack of funding for research. But lost in all that, said Pfeifer, is how many people are still coming down with the disease.
“More women die from lung cancer than breast cancer,” he said, though the latter tends to get more public attentio, and the funding that goes with it.
“If they’re a smoker or not, no one deserves lung cancer,” he said.
Arizona has a long history of efforts that now help Arizona rank as being among the best places to fight cancer.
That started with the 1994 voter-approved measure that imposed a 40-cent-per-pack tax on cigarettes. That funded the high-profile media campaign which dubbed smoking a “tumor-causing, teeth-staining, smelly, puking habit.”
The levy was increased again in 2002, though the lion’s share of those dollars were earmarked for expanding coverage for the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, the state’s Medicaid program.
And then there was the 2006 ballot measure.
WalletHub spokeswoman Jill Gonzalez said 26 states do have some type of laws restricting where people can light up.
“But then Arizona in particular also has worksite smoke-free laws, restaurant smoke-free laws and bars smoke-free laws,” she said.
“That’s where it kind of pulls ahead,” Gonzalez said. “A lot of states still don’t have those bars smoke-free laws,” with the Arizona statute even covering the area outside of bars. That still leaves the one area where Arizona falls down: air quality.
That rating is likely due largely to what is happening in the Phoenix area and, to a lesser extent, pollution in other cities. And Pfeifer said the primary culprit is vehicle traffic.
“We’re just a bunch of people that like to own our cars and drive them,” he said. “And whatever we can do to reduce those vehicle miles traveled is going to ultimately help the air pollution problem we face from time to time.”
