Claire Fiddian-Green is the President & CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. Comprehensive tobacco control efforts play a critical role in reducing smoking and lowering the health and economic toll of the smoking epidemic. But Indiana woefully underfunds these initiatives, falling far below federal recommendations and dollars spent in other states, according to a new report commissioned by the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. Indiana devoted just $8.2 million in federal and state spending in 2016 to preventing Hoosiers from starting to smoke, helping them quit, and protecting people from secondhand smoke. This is only 11 percent of the $73.5 million recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention […]

Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. The dangers of smoking are well-known. Smokers are more likely to die from lung cancer, heart disease, lung disease and other deadly illnesses, not to mention the health risks caused by secondhand smoke exposure or the impacts to newborns caused by smoking among pregnant women. Yet smoking still persists—for example, more than 1 in 5 Hoosiers currently smoke—in large part due to the addictive effects of nicotine. More than two-thirds of smokers want to quit, but nicotine keeps smokers smoking and consuming the other carcinogens and toxicants for the long term. What if it was […]