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By Teresa Thomas Boyd and Pastor Dr. Steven Tipton
John Lewis, prominent in the civil rights movement, left behind a legacy of inspiring quotes. His rallying cry — “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something.” His message couldn’t be timelier in the wake of an unprecedented dismantling of our public health care systems.
As faith leaders, we are dedicated to keeping Wisconsin kids safe, healthy and tobacco-free.
We support efforts to help adults break free of tobacco addiction. As clergy we see and hear from community members who suffer from losing loved ones to tobacco and their concerns about how youth are targeted by the tobacco industry.
Through our community partnerships, and CDC and FDA funding to our state, progress has been made in reducing youth access to tobacco products and reducing the adult rate of smoking and raising awareness about issues such as tobacco industry targeting. The evidence demonstrates how our efforts have resulted in significant successes. The rate at which tobacco and vape retailers sold to underage consumers in Wisconsin dropped from 13.6% in 2023 to 11.8% in 2024. The latest data shows that the adult smoking rate in Wisconsin dropped from 24% in 2000 to 12% in 2023, an all-time low for Wisconsin.
Nevertheless, work remains to be done. One of seven (16%) high schoolers currently use e-cigarettes, a 33% increase since 2017. Eighteen percent of young adults in Wisconsin currently use e-cigarettes, making up about one-third (32%) of all adult e-cigarette users in Wisconsin. These and other emerging commercial tobacco and nicotine products threaten the work that Wisconsin has achieved.
The FDA’s Center for Tobacco plays a critical role in preventing illegal e-cigarettes and other flavored tobacco products from entering the market and monitoring retailers. The Wisconsin quit line has helped over 200,000 in Wisconsin.
These programs are at risk of being downsized or eliminated in Wisconsin due to federal funding cuts. We express a strong objection to the elimination of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Office on Smoking and Heath (OSH) and staffing cuts at the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products (FDA/CTP) and other cuts to programs that protect public health.
In Wisconsin, 7,900 people die each year from tobacco use. Tobacco use also costs Americans over $241 billion in annual health care costs. That amounts to $1,220 per taxpaying household, whether someone in that family uses tobacco products or not. In Wisconsin, smoking costs the state over $3 billion in direct health care costs.
Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States and the leading cause of chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease, stroke, COPD and diabetes. The chronic disease epidemic cannot be fully addressed in our state without the steadfast support and partnership of the CDC’s OSH and the FDA.
Eliminating OSH will be a serious blow to our state’s efforts to prevent and reduce tobacco use. In Fiscal Year 2024, Wisconsin received a total of $1,588,681 in tobacco prevention funding from OSH, including $1,273,529 in National Tobacco Control Program funding and $315,152 in quit line funding to help support its tobacco prevention and cessation efforts. 7 Approximately 20% of Wisconsin’s FY 2024 Quitline funding was funded by CDC.
Now is the time to “say something and do something.” Together, as community leaders and elected officials, we can make progress and change things to the betterment of all of us. Senator Tammy Baldwin has long been a champion for preventing youth tobacco addiction and helping smokers who want to quit. Join us in calling on her leadership now more than ever to protect our communities by defending critical CDC and FDA programs.
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