WASHINGTON—California’s aggressive tobacco control efforts, which include raising tobacco taxes and using some of that revenue for prevention efforts, appear to have played a significant role in the state’s decrease in lung cancer rates, according to a new collaborative study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the California Department of Health Services.
The study showed a decline in lung and bronchus cancer incidence from 1988 to 1997 of 14% for California, compared with 2.7% for eight selected regions of the country. The incidence rate decreased 4.8% among California women, while rising 13.2% in the comparison regions. Among California men, the rate of decline was 1.5 times greater than that seen in the other areas studied.
