Smokers Feeling The Pinch

By Skip Descant

Posted: May 23, 2009 at midnight

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FAYETTEVILLE — Conventional wisdom says money can be a powerful motivator.

So when the price of cigarettes goes up, the number of smokers drops. That’s been happening since the price of cigarettes took a sharp increase in March, say doctors and smokers.

Just not as much as hoped.

“I’m really trying to quit,” Tom McBee said one night recently at the Crown Pub in Fayetteville as he lit a Marlboro Light.

“I went nine days without smoking, then I broke down and bought a pack,” McBee, 27, confessed.

When asked if he’s noticed a decreasing number of smokers in his bar, Jim Kanally, a bartender at Crown Pub, immediately shook his head no.

“People are less likely to buy a pack if they don’t have to,” said Trey Fincher, 32, and a bartender at Brewski’s Draft Emporium, a consistently hazy, smoke-filled bar on Dickson Street in Fayetteville. A pack of cigarettes from the vending machine there costs about $8.

“I haven’t really noticed any cutback in business, but we’re selling a lot less (cigarettes),” said Kristi, a bartender, who asked her last name not be used and who generally doesn’t put her own cigarette down while serving drinks. “I’d say it’s about 25 percent less.”

The state began charging an extra 56-cent tax on the price of cigarettes in March. The projected $70 million a year in tax revenue will help pay for a state trauma center. Doctors who follow smoking rates say it will take more than a 56-cent per pack increase in the price of cigarettes to substantially reduce smoking. The federal government also increased its cigarette tax from 39 cents to $1.01 per pack in February. Tobacco companies also announced price increases. Cigarettes are now roughly $6 a pack.

“An increase in price does cause a decrease in the numbers of smokers, but only by so much,” said Dr. Carolyn Dresler, director of the Arkansas Department of Health Tobacco Control Program. “It is measurable, and we intend to assess this, but the majority of smokers will adjust to the price. Until the next increase, when more will then quit.”

The price increase had so many smokers across the state fretting, the number of callers weekly to the Arkansas Tobacco Quitline leading up to the tax increase mounted to more than 3,000. The quitline was receiving about 350 calls a week last October and November, Dresler said.

By the beginning of May, the number had dropped to about 550 callers. Then in early May, the number of dropped to the low 400s, Dresler said. However, a new television ad began running and numbers climbed to 750.

“So — you see, we can ‘control’ the numbers to the quitline,” Dresler said.

When smokers call the quitline, they get connected to a “quit coach” who offers motivational counseling and quitting tips. When the number of callers spiked to 3,000 a week the counseling had to be scaled back, Dresler added.

“Right now, we are able to provide the single counseling call and nicotine replacement therapy — patches, if appropriate,” Dresler wrote in a e-mail in early April. “We hope to return to our more comprehensive program as soon as we can.”

The number of callers may be encouraging, but the quit-rate is usually pretty low.

“If you can get a 15 to 20 percent quit rate, we would be sailing,” Dresler said.

Arkansas was part of the multistate tobacco Master Settlement Agreement In 1998. The state will receive about $62.7 million from the fund in 2010, Dresler said. Today, 31.6 percent of this money goes to smoking cessation programs.

The smoking rate in Washington County is about 19 percent, according to a 2008 county adult health survey by the Arkansas Department of Health. For the section of the survey related to smoking, 798 randomly selected adults participated. A similar survey was not conducted in Benton County. The statewide smoking rate is 22.3 percent, said state health officials.

There seems to be no shortage of smoking studies. And the reasons people smoke are anything but easy to pigeonhole, said researchers. But a few patterns do float to the top, Dresler said.

“Often times low income and low education overlap,” she noted. “The people that are more educated are most likely not to smoke.”

“A lower socioeconomic group is less likely to know the health impact,” Dresler said.

Generally by age 40, smoking awareness mounts and many people give up the habit.

Smoking among young people is also down.

In Washington County the smoking rate among the 18- to 39-year-old crowd is 15 percent.

“That’s an incredibly good sign,” said Dresler.

“I only smoke when I drink,” said Jim Clark, 23, and a University of Arkansas student who was having beers with friends one recent night at the Crown Pub.

“I’m down to about a pack every two days,” Clark added. Clark was at a pack a day and says he plans to quit.

What may be more effective than price increases is changing the way people live, Dresler says.

Fayetteville passed a nonsmoking ordinance in 2003 that effectively removed smoking from indoor public places such as offices, shops and restaurants. The law does not pertain to bars. The ordinance was to take effect on Feb. 1, 2004. In March of that year, a public referendum was held, upholding the ordinance.

The Arkansas Legislature in 2006 passed the Arkansas Clean Indoor Air Act, which was essentially a statewide version of the Fayetteville ordinance. The statewide measure has gone a long way in reducing smoking, Dresler said, but then added, “We still do not have a comprehensive clean air act, because we have smoking in bars.”

The thinking is that in time, through no-smoking laws and increased taxes on cigarettes, smoking will slowly fade from everyday life.

“Smoke-free policies are about changing social norms,” Dresler said. Smoke-free workplaces, she noted, often lead to smoke-free homes.

“You just see this whole trending of social norms where smoking is socially unacceptable,” she said. The University of Arkansas became a tobacco-free campus nearly a year ago. Since then, most campuses within the University of Arkansas system have followed suit.

A complete nonsmoking move for Fayetteville could still be in the distant future.

“It’s something I would certainly look at,” Mayor Lioneld Jordan said recently.

No one has brought a proposal to the mayor’s office, and Jordan says he prefers to wait until a resident’s group or council member brings him a proposal before heading into the smoking debate again. Jordan was an aldermen during the last yearlong no-smoking debate.

“And I can’t say that I would support it if it wasn’t written up correctly,” Jordan continued, hinting at his own hesitancy to wade into the hornets’ nest of argument that a comprehensive no-smoking policy could excite.

“But theoretically, I support nonsmoking,” the mayor said.

Back at Brewski’s where the mostly college crowd juggles financial priorities such as smokes, cheap drinks and school costs, the hope among nonsmoking advocates is the young adults will just quit for good. But at least some indication says that could still be a few years away.

“The answer is yeah, we’re cutting back, but just until we can afford to buy a pack,” said Nic Peavy, 24, a Web designer. “No one is really quitting, maybe cutting back.”

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