SC to Lose Successful Teen Anti-Smoking Program [08/12-3]
Excerpts from: S.C. set to lose good teen anti-smoking program
By RENEE MARTIN The State.com [08/12/04]
Rage Against the Haze, a successful teen-oriented prevention program run through the Department of Health and Environmental Control’s Division of Tobacco Prevention and Control, is the only curriculum-based prevention program of its kind in the United States.
With the proceeds of the 1998 tobacco settlements, states across the country spent millions of dollars on anti-tobacco advertising campaigns geared at youth. South Carolina received $791 million, a relatively small piece of the tobacco settlement pie, and ultimately spent less than 1 percent of that on smoking prevention programs — a major purported benefit of the settlement in the first place.
South Carolina did redeem itself a little, however, when it became one of the only states to look past the avalanche of short-term advertising dollars and used the funding to lay the groundwork for a statewide teen initiative that could eventually be self-sustaining. The state recognized the fact that the settlement dollars would eventually dwindle and that a smattering of advertisements geared toward youth would do nothing to help teens in the long run after the ads went off the air.
In 2000, with an initial allocation of $1.75 million, DHEC created a program called Rage Against the Haze, designed to be largely Web-based and to incorporate lessons about tobacco marketing that teens could take back to their own communities and use to implement positive change.
In the past three years, the movement has grown much like a virus. One teen tells another teen to check out the Web site www.rageagainstthehaze.com. Teens sign up online and begin earning cool prizes for fighting tobacco in their own hometowns. Every few months, they enjoy opportunities to get together with other RAGEers at the state level.
Not only are the more than 800 teens who are now involved drastically cutting the potential risk that they’ll one day become smokers, but they’re also learning to be activists — a word that is in far too few American teenagers’ vocabularies.
South Carolina’s fledgling program has been receiving warm accolades. This summer, one of the program’s handbooks was honored with a national Addy award, recognition reserved for creative work of the highest caliber. In Florida, where millions of dollars have already been spent on expensive anti-smoking advertising campaigns, health officials are lining up to learn how South Carolina’s curriculum-based program has been so effective.
Unfortunately, while Floridians and others around the United States have been paying close attention to South Carolina’s prevention program for teens, our own state Legislature has not. Despite the fact that teen smoking statistics are slowly beginning to fall in South Carolina, legislators have decided that programs like Rage Against the Haze don’t warrant dollars.
Following Rage’s birth in 2001, funding fell only slightly the following year to $1.6 million. For 2002-2003, Rage received only $1.1 million, with part of its allocation earmarked for other programs. Then in 2003, without warning, the program received nothing. I’m thankful that DHEC was able to allocate $400,000 nonetheless to keep the program alive one more year. But with this year’s latest legislative snub, the program may find itself unable to even enjoy its adolescence.
It really is a shame. It’s a shame that our Legislature can’t appreciate what a preventative program like Rage Against the Haze means to the health of the children in our state. South Carolina consistently ranks near the bottom of the 50 states when it comes to issues of public health and education. For once, South Carolina ranked among the top states in the nation in something.
We may have the third-lowest cigarette tax, the weakest teen smoking laws and one of the most wasteful allocations of tobacco settlement dollars in the United States, but at least we could brag about having one heck of a teen anti-smoking movement. Unfortunately, South Carolina stands to lose one of the most progressive programs in the country, and the state’s teens stand to become tomorrow’s sad statistics.
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