Media Release

CONTACT: Carol Hall-Walker
FOR: Immediate Release
DATE: January 22, 2001

RHODE ISLAND AND MASSACHUSETTS JOIN FORCES TO COMBAT SMOKING

Historic New Anti-smoking Media Campaign Launched

The Rhode Island Department of Health and Massachusetts Department of Public Health today announced a new, historic collaborative tobacco education media campaign targeting smokers and children in Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts.

"We must solve the problem of tobacco-related diseases," said Dr. Patricia A. Nolan, Director of the Rhode Island Department of Health. "Tobacco causes 2,000 unnecessary deaths each year in Rhode Island and costs over $300 million – just in medical expenses. We have to do more with what we have to counter the well-financed effort by the industry to promote tobacco use. This partnership between our two states helps to reduce tobacco’s toll by improving access to public health information and increasing opportunities to quit smoking."

Lt. Governor Charles J. Fogarty, who has led the fight in Rhode Island since 1998 to dedicate the money from the tobacco settlement to tobacco control and health care efforts and who urged Rhode Island to join Massachusetts in the advertising campaign, said, "This is truly a children's public health issue -- one that will kill 23,000 Rhode Island children who are alive today if we do not do something right now. By joining with Massachusetts, we are able to maximize our limited counter-advertising resources, and that, together with strong enforcement and community-based initiatives, will help us to save some of these children from this deadly addiction and even help some adults to stop."

Senator Thomas J. Izzo (D-13) noted that, "It has been a long, hard battle to prevent youth from starting to smoke and to increase the number of smokers who quit. I am particularly pleased that Massachusetts and Rhode Island have forged this collaboration to plan and execute together such a major tobacco education media campaign."

The $1.9 million program will produce new television and radio advertising to air on Providence, Fall River, and New Bedford stations throughout the year and offer additional tobacco education programs. The goal of the program is to get smokers to quit and prevent kids from lighting up. By pooling resources, the states of Rhode Island and Massachusetts double the value of media campaigns and reach a far greater audience than if they ran separate campaigns.

The media campaign this spring will feature ads targeting young people with a strong, consistent message about the dangers of smoking. These will be followed by a final series on the dangers of secondhand smoke. The program will also work with health care professionals in Rhode Island and in Southeastern Massachusetts to encourage them to counsel their patients to quit.

The media education campaign also promotes use of a new website, www.trytostop.org that provides interactive on-line counseling. Each smoker to enroll progresses through six stages of quitting at their own pace by downloading an individualized quit plan.

Trytostop.org also features monthly medical articles authored by health and tobacco treatment experts, as well as a comprehensive listing of local tobacco treatment available to Massachusetts and Rhode Island residents. Quit tips and anecdotal stories on how others quit can also be found at this website. Quit Wizard is easily accessed through the www.trytostop.org website. This site will be advertised through radio ads this month and television ads in February. Internet banner advertising will be features on popular internet sites including AOL.com, Boston.com and Yahoo.com.

Arnold Worldwide and Geovision, a minority owned business advertising firm, were responsible for production of the media education campaign.