State Dragging Feet on Smoking Cessation, Claims ACS

WASHINGTON (WHTC) – In a report issued today, the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network said that Michigan should raise its tobacco tax from its current two-dollars-a-pack, which hasn’t changed in 11 years, and to increase funding tobacco prevention programs from its current 1.5 million dollars. The survey showed that 21.5 percent of the state’s population smokes; the national average is 17.8 percent, and nearly six thousand of the 86 hundred persons diagnosed with lung cancer this year in Michigan will die from it.