(Continued)

Demand for Clean Air Housing
In November 2005, Seattle voters adopted a smoking ban for public places and work settings. A side-effect of the law was that King County residents wanted to be free from secondhand smoke in their homes as they were in public and at work. Phone calls about smoke drift from neighbors dramatically increased, especially from tenants in multi-unit housing.

As the call volume went up, the Tobacco Prevention Program decided to further understand the magnitude of the problem. It contracted the Gilmore Research Group to survey renters in buildings with two or more units about their experiences with smoke. The survey was conducted in 2008 with a random sample of King County phone numbers. The survey reached 500 multi-unit housing renters.

Key findings from the survey:

• 83 percent of renters reported they had personal household rules that prohibited themselves, family, and guests from smoking in their unit.
• One in three renters lived in buildings where smoking was not allowed in all the units by property management.
• One in five renters said they experienced secondhand smoke in their homes multiple times per week. For half of these people, it was an everyday occurrence.
• Respondents who lived in buildings where property management had not set rules prohibiting smoking were also more likely to experience secondhand smoke. These people were more likely to live in south King County, to report unemployment, and not to have graduated from college.

The Tobacco Prevention Program is using this information to strategically direct efforts to increase smoke-free housing, including outreach to landlords and property mangers. In 2008, the program provided education to over 300 housing decision-makers about the demand for smoke-free housing and the benefits of a non-smoking policy.

Assistance for Tenants
Along with creating more smoke-free housing, helping tenants get away from secondhand smoke is another key component of the Tobacco Prevention Program's work. The program is developing tenant outreach that will encourage everyone to ask about the smoking policy of a unit before they sign a lease.

For tenants already in a unit that has secondhand smoke drifting in, the program offers one-on-one assistance. This includes:

• Providing strategies for talking with neighbors,
• Informing landlords and condo boards about their rights to prohibit smoking on the property, and the benefits of going smoke-free,
• And as a stop-gap measure, helping people suffering from second-hand smoke with tips to temporarily lessen the impact.

Protection for Everyone
Unfortunately, most of the tenants calling the program, like Mary, have limited resources for housing and are facing steep declines in health that complicate their entire lives. If a landlord or condo board is not ready to introduce a non-smoking policy, they can be stuck breathing dangerous smoke in their home.

Some tenants have legal solutions. Because of her medical history, Mary's case may qualify for the Fair Housing Act — which grants equal access to housing for people with disabilities. The Tobacco Prevention Program helped Mary report her case to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the agency that decides Fair Housing cases and could ask her condo board to provide a reasonable accommodation so she can safely live in her unit.

However, not every caller to the program is eligible for help under the Fair Housing Act, and for every caller that reaches the Tobacco Prevention Program, many more people continue to experience smoke drift without knowing how to take action. The program will continue to educate landlords and property managers about the issue as well as investigate remedies that would create the option of non-smoking housing for everyone.

King County Tobacco Control featured in National Public Radio story
by Paul Zemann

Last November, National Public Radio (NPR) aired a series about tobacco control on the national show All Things Considered, coinciding with the 10-year anniversary of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) and a recent Centers for Disease Control (CDC) report showing the lowest U.S. smoking prevalence in years.

King County was featured as an example of a community that has used tobacco settlement money wisely in the first piece of the series, "States' Use Of Tobacco Money Varies Widely". Debbie Elliot, the series reporter, profiled a King County project with Head Start and Early Childhood Education Assistance Programs, the federal and state government-sponsored pre-schools for low-income families. With Public Health's help, the twelve pre-school programs have included smoking cessation assistance, secondhand smoke reduction, and asthma prevention into the services offered to families.

The story also highlighted the work of Elaine Ishihara, director of the state's Asian Pacific Islander Coalition Against Tobacco, a partner of Public Health's Tobacco Prevention Program. Ishihara discussed the challenges her organization faces in reducing tobacco use in diverse, multilingual groups in Washington.

While the MSA has changed the way tobacco companies operate, many states have chosen to not spend adequate MSA funds on tobacco control, and tobacco remains the leading cause of death in the U.S.

To listen to the story or read a transcript, go to: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97081916
Story adapted from information at Tobacco Technical Assistance Consortium.

Tobacco Prevention Program Saves State Millions of Dollars by Preventing Youth Access to Tobacco
by Fel Pajimula

Did you know that almost 90 percent of adult smokers began using tobacco at or before age 18? Youth obtain tobacco from many sources, including family and friends. Fourteen percent of youth who smoke report buying tobacco illegally at stores.

For the Tobacco Prevention Program, the benefits of decreasing illegal sales to youth are twofold; stop youth from accessing a deadly product that causes lifelong addiction and keep federal money for substance abuse prevention in Washington State. The federal Synar Act ties reports of sales to minors to federal funding allocated to states.

Providing education and enforcement on Washington's youth access laws are a staple of keeping compliance rates — the rate of retailers refusing to sell tobacco to minors- low. Every year the Tobacco Prevention Program conducts compliance checks at 1000 tobacco retailers. Over the past eight years the compliance rate in King County has been 92 percent.

Of the one thousand yearly checks, two hundred are required by the Synar Act to monitor the percentage of tobacco retailers in a year who make illegal sales to youth. The additional 800 checks are part of the program's strategy to reach a large portion of King County's tobacco retailers with education and to identify retailers who are breaking the law. These additional compliance checks in the County lead to a higher rate of compliance from all retailers.

The compliance checks required by Synar have teenage operatives attempt to purchase tobacco in a random sample of each state's retailers. Each state must meet a minimum 80 percent compliance during these annual inspections. Washington is one of only four states that have met this requirement since 1993. That figure is more than just a good track record. If Washington doesn't meet 80 percent compliance the consequence is losing up to 40 percent of federal substance abuse and treatment block grant funds, amounting to more than $14 million.

In addition to compliance checks, each year the Tobacco Prevention Program targets at least 200 retailers to receive education-only visits. Education visits cover specific skills to help make retailers more compliant, including effective ways to check IDs and refuse sales to minors.

The Tobacco Prevention Program of Public Health - Seattle & King County remains committed to meeting the Synar requirement and, ultimately, to reducing youth access to tobacco products. The program will continue to conduct education and enforcement visits throughout the County in 2009.

Did you know?

Legislative Update
by Paul Zemann

This session the Washington State Legislature will consider multiple bills that could strengthen tobacco control and prevention in King County and the state. The Tobacco Prevention Program is providing expert testimony in Olympia on several of the bills and providing support for others about Washington's most urban county. Here is a look at the docket and how the program is considering each bill:

*HB-House Bill, SB-Senate Bill

For the latest information on these and other bills in the state legislature, visit http://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo.