Partnership for Prevention today urged Senators drafting the economic stimulus bill to preserve funding for tobacco cessation programs, saying the programs would create jobs and help rebuild the public health infrastructure. “The funding for tobacco cessation programs would create jobs and do so in a way that is consistent with sound fiscal policy and sound public health policy,” Partnership Interim President Corinne G. Husten said in a letter to Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the chairman and ranking Republican of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services.

“Funding additional quitlines and cessation programs will help provide more of the services needed to empower people to quit smoking,” Husten said. “Doing so will produce jobs to staff and promote the quitlines and other cessation programs. Given that smoking is responsible for over 400,000 deaths each year in the United States and for $193 billion annually in healthcare costs and lost worker productivity, this is no small matter.”

Husten said the funding is consistent with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Best Practices, which calls for increasing support for state quitlines so that they have the infrastructure to provide comprehensive treatment to at least 10% of all tobacco users each year.

She said it was also consistent with a plan unveiled in November by a coalition of major business, labor, insurance, health care, and government institutions to provide every American with access to comprehensive tobacco cessation treatment services by the year 2020. This “Call for ACTTION” (Access to Cessation Treatment for Tobacco In Our Nation) was also endorsed by three former Surgeons General and three former secretaries of the federal Health and Human Service department. Details on the plan are available  online at www.acttiontoquit.org.