COALITION: CONTROL WORKERS’ COMP COSTS BY RAISING CIGARETTE TAX
Study reveals injured workers more prone to be smokers

A legislative committee studying ways to lower the state’s workers’ compensation cost should look to a surprising option – raising the state’s cigarette tax.

While Texans Investing in Healthy Families continues to recommend increasing the cigarette tax to generate new state revenue and improve Texans’ health, the advocacy group also is promoting it as a partial fix for the state’s workers’ compensation woes.

Smoking is the second biggest contributor to workers’ compensation costs, according to a four-year study of long-term employees at Xerox Corp. published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

“If the state raises the cigarette tax – and dedicates part of that increase for statewide programs to help smokers quit – fewer Texans will smoke,” said Kelly Headrick, vice president for governmental relations for the American Cancer Society – Texas Division. “This study suggests that workers who do not smoke are less prone to on-the-job injuries. Obviously, businesses will spend less on workers’ compensation if fewer workers are injured.”

Texans Investing in Healthy Families is sharing the results of that study with the Select Interim Senate Committee on Workers’ Compensation, which met Thursday to hear testimony. The committee is charged with making recommendations to control costs for businesses while providing quality care for injured workers.

The Xerox Corp. study evaluated 15 risk factors among injured workers. Smoking placed well ahead of other variables analyzed, including physical health, alcohol use, physical activity, stress and weight. The only risk factor that outranked smoking was “health age index,” described as “a measure of controllable health risks.”

“There is a consistent association between those who smoke and increased injury rates,” researchers wrote in the Journal article.

“The reasons to raise the cigarette tax just keep growing,” said Karen Love, advocacy chair for the American Heart Association – Texas Affiliate. “Now we can add lower workers’ compensation costs to a list that already includes generation of new state revenue, reduced state health care expenditures and healthier, longer-living Texans.”

Texans Investing in Healthy Families is asking legislators and state leadership to raise the state’s cigarette tax by $1 per pack with 5 cents of every dollar dedicated to expanding programs to help smokers quit. The current 41-cent per pack cigarette tax was last raised in 1990.
-- more --
A $1 per pack increase is projected to raise $1.5 billion per biennium, reduce the $1.26 billion a year the state spends in Medicaid funding on direct tobacco-related health care costs, convince 179,000 adult smokers to quit, decrease youth smoking by 19.8 percent, save 135,600 Texans from smoking-caused deaths and prevent 301,000 Texas children from ever starting to smoke.

Texans Investing in Healthy Families is a statewide coalition dedicated to reducing the toll of tobacco in Texas.  Coalition members include the Texas PTA, the American Heart Association – Texas Affiliate, the American Lung Association of Texas, the American Cancer Society – Texas Division, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, TRUST For a Smoke-Free Texas and the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

-- ## --

NOTE: Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine article available upon request.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Kirsten Voinis