Every year, the American Cancer Society reviews each of the 50 states\u2019 cancer-fighting programs.\u00a0 The report, How Do You Measure Up, was released last week and identified some good news and bad for New Yorkers.<\/p>\n
As we all know, cancer is a classification of many types of diseases.\u00a0 According to the National Cancer Institute, cancer is \u201cthe name given to a collection of related diseases.\u00a0 There are about 100 different types of cancer.\u00a0 In all types of cancer, some of the body\u2019s cells begin to divide without stopping and spread into surrounding tissues.\u201d\u00a0 As those cells spread, they can damage other parts of the body and may form growths called tumors.<\/p>\n
Virtually all New Yorkers have had an experience with cancer.\u00a0 According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cancer is the second leading cause of death in America.\u00a0 Outside of the relatively benign skin cancers, there are five cancers that constitute roughly half of all cancer cases in New York and that also constitute half of all of the cancer deaths.\u00a0 Those are cancers of the prostate, female breast, lung, pancreas, and colon.<\/p>\n
Breast cancer is the leading form of cancer affecting women and the second biggest killer.\u00a0 Yet, it is not the leading cause of cancer deaths for women.\u00a0 Prostate cancer is a leading cause of cancer in men, but it is not the leading cause of cancer deaths in men.\u00a0 That terrible distinction belongs to lung cancer.\u00a0 Nearly one quarter of all cancer deaths result from lung cancer.<\/p>\n
The American Cancer Society\u2019s report reviewed how the state combats cancer using the best practices that are available.\u00a0 In some areas, like colon cancer screening, the programs show strong positive results.\u00a0 While there are always risks to undergoing any more invasive screenings, generally the risks are far outweighed by the benefits of identifying and treating colon cancer.<\/p>\n
When it comes to lung cancer, the screening programs\u2019 successes are more limited.\u00a0 Yet we know how best to avoid lung cancer: by reducing the use of tobacco products.<\/p>\n
The leading cause of lung cancer is tobacco use. Today nearly 9 out of 10 lung cancers are caused by smoking cigarettes.\u00a0 Not only are smokers at risk, but even non-smokers can be afflicted by exposure to tobacco smoke.\u00a0 In the U.S., more than 7,300 nonsmoking lung cancer patients die each year from exposure to secondhand smoke alone.<\/p>\n
The American Cancer Society report reviewed the state\u2019s tobacco control efforts and essentially gave it a failing grade.\u00a0 It\u2019s not that the program doesn\u2019t follow the best practices, it\u2019s because the program is starved for funds \u2013 funds which are readily available.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s where New York State policy comes in.<\/p>\n
The federal government has offered blueprints to the states on how to design their tobacco control programs to have the most beneficial impact.\u00a0 And here is where the wheels start to come off in New York.<\/p>\n
The experts at the federal government\u2019s U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that New York State spend roughly $200 million on its tobacco control program.\u00a0 But New York never has.<\/p>\n
What is most inexplicable is that the state has the money for the program.\u00a0 It collects over $1 billion in tobacco taxes and still receives hundreds of millions from the Master Settlement Agreement.\u00a0 The Master Settlement Agreement was a deal between the tobacco companies and the states to compensate taxpayers for the health care claims that resulted from tobacco use.<\/p>\n
Instead of investing some of these tobacco revenues into programs to help reduce the health care carnage caused by smoking, the state\u2019s program has suffered from devastating cuts during the Cuomo Administration, and has lost more than half<\/em> of its funding.<\/p>\n So despite receiving well over a billion dollars from tobacco companies \u2013 who take it from their addicted customers \u2013 the Cuomo Administration has slashed funding for programs to keep kids from starting and to help smokers to quit.\u00a0 They\u2019ve spent the money elsewhere.<\/p>\n The American Cancer Society\u2019s report should be a wake-up call to the Administration and to all New Yorkers \u2013 invest tobacco revenues into health prevention; if that is done many lives will be saved.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every year, the American Cancer Society reviews each of the 50 states\u2019 cancer-fighting programs.\u00a0 The report, How Do You Measure Up, was released last week and identified some good news and bad for New Yorkers. As we all know, cancer is a classification of many types of diseases.\u00a0 According to the National Cancer Institute, cancer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1935"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1936,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions\/1936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}