Tobacco Free Child Smoking Campaign Analysis

In Virginia specifically, 10,300 adults die of smoking related diseases each year (Irimina, 2017). The CDC gave the state of Virginia approximately $1.3 million in 2016 to help prevent and control tobacco use. Virginia has also taken steps to prevent secondhand smoking by enforcing smoke free zone in public areas, on school property, and college campuses. Since 2012, 7 out of 10 adults wished to quit smoking. This expansion of awareness is shown through the increase of calls to the smoking quitline by an average of 286%. The campaign recorded a number of 9,027 calls into the state of Virginia quitline in 2016 (Irimina, 2017). As stated by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, “Tobacco tax increases are one of the most effective ways to reduce smoking and other tobacco use, especially among …show more content…
Tobacco Free Kids makes many points on how the federal excise tax on cigarettes is not just positively impacting the individual who chooses to decrease or cease their cigarette use, but also the government, health care costs, and the generated revenues. While this poses incentive to both sides, it is still shown that nearly all U.S. states have been hesitant or slow to adapt to the increase of this tax on cigarettes. According to the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, “because of federal and state cigarette tax increases, cigarette sales declined by 8.3 percent in 2009, one of the largest declines in years. The large increase in the federal cigarette tax helped spur more rapid declines in adult and youth smoking rates, after years without much change (2017).” In addition to being beneficial for both the government and the youth population, increase of the excise tax on cigarettes has gained support from all political