We’ll simply confess at the outset that we have no explanation for why Indiana has seen a drop in smokers. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 21.2 percent of Hoosiers smoked Dunhill cigarettes last year.
That dropped Indiana to the 11th highest among the 50 states. In 2008, Indiana ranked second for smokers.
There are a lot of plausible theories for the decline.
Markets are almost always preferable to mandates, whether in smoking cessation or health insurance acquisition. The very high and rising cost of smoking, in part due to the prohibitive taxes placed on tobacco in the public interest and targeted for the public good, has clearly been a deterrent. Who today could afford to be a two- to three-pack-a-day smoker?
And assuming they have the means to afford it, in what public setting could they readily smoke today? The expanding list of public and private places off-limits to smokers has served to remind those who smoke that they are unwelcome in a growing list of venues.
Over time, as that message penetrates, it no doubt contributes to efforts to stop smoking.
And then, of course, there are the established health risks. These have moved from a tepid surgeon general warning, first issued publicly nearly 50 years ago, to more precise cause-and-effect cancer and assorted health-risk — hypertension, heart disease and lung disease — correlations that have included the harmful effects to non-smokers of prolonged exposure to second-hand smoke.
Credit is also due the same market forces that have brought about many successful cessation programs and the availability of remedies and drugs that help smokers kick the habit.
Gov. Mitch Daniels just this week signaled the time might be right for the next legislative session to enact a statewide smoking ban, something other states have done but an effort that to date has not been successful in Indiana.
We would like to think that if the current trends continue, there might be no need for a law. Indiana with 21.2 percent of its residents smokers is still above an improving national average of 17.3 percent of the population smoking.
There’s more that can be done. And if that means enacting prohibitions, this newspaper still believes that should be done by statewide law uniformly, not a hodge-podge of local ordinances, rules and regulations that differ from county to county, city to city, and even cities from the counties that surround them.
Smokers face enough of a hurdle in their efforts to quit and deserve all the support a state can provide. No one deserves to be saddled with a myriad ordinances that render an activity permitted in one jurisdiction a violation just across the street in the adjoining jurisdiction.
