Illinois smokers will temporarily find it more difficult to get help trying to quit the habit. The state this week became the first in the country not to provide phone counseling services for tobacco cessation.
The Illinois Tobacco Quitline ceased operations on Wednesday. The program's funding was cut for the remainder of the state's fiscal year, ending June 30, as part of Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner's plan to suspend $26 million in public health and social services grants.
“The grant suspension in no way reflected the ability of the grantee to perform what they've been asked to do,” said Melaney Arnold, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health. “It's not performance-related; it was just a savings decision.”
Arnold said funding for Quitline would be reinstated for the next fiscal budget year beginning July 1. But the program's suspension leaves Illinois as the only state not to offer a call-in counseling service to help people quit smoking. Advocates say the move may ultimately cost the state more than the short-term savings it gains if individuals who might have called the quit line get discouraged and continue to smoke.
“We are missing a lot of opportunities to help people quit,” said Kathy Drea, vice president of Advocacy for the American Lung Association in Illinois. The organization has run the program for the state since its inception in 2001. “It doesn't take very many lung cancer cases or heart attacks or strokes and the treatment for those diseases to by far bypass the $3.1 million that the Illinois Tobacco Quitline receives annually.”
Drea estimated the program will miss between 40,000 and 50,000 calls from now until the end of June. The quit line answered more than 90,000 calls in 2014, with 25% of those calls coming from Medicaid recipients.
Annual healthcare costs directly related to smoking totaled more than $5 billion in Illinois in 2013, according to estimates from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, with the amount paid by Medicaid estimated at $1.9 billion.
“States helping smokers quit is not only in the best interests of the health of their citizens, but is ultimately in the best financial interests of their state,” said Erika Sward, assistant vice president of National Advocacy for the American Lung Association. “The decision to shut down a quit line or to significantly scale back funding for it is really a pennywise-pound-foolish decision.”
Sward said the decision to suspend funding comes at a time when overall volume has increased 240% since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched its national “Tips from Former Smokers” campaign in March.
“Right now, millions of smokers across the U.S. are seeing ads that have been proven effective and are calling 1-800-QUIT-NOW,” Sward said. “And in Illinois, nobody is going to pick up the phone.”
Even if the program is suspended for only a few months, there could be longer-lasting effects, Drea said. As many as 27 staff members were effectively laid off because of the funding decision, and it could be difficult to quickly replace the group of specially trained nurses and respiratory therapists needed to be cessation counselors.
The Quitline is funded by the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement of 1998, which required the four largest tobacco companies to make annual payments to 46 states to compensate them for the medical costs incurred for treating those with illnesses caused by smoking.
