The $11 million Hawaii is spending a year to prevent tobacco use is paying off with the second-lowest smoking-related death rate in the nation, a new federal study reports, said Deborah Zysman, director of the Coalition for a Tobacco Free Hawaii.

    Utah leads the states with the lowest average smoking-related death rate of 138.3 annually per 100,000 population, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on smoking deaths and years of potential life lost from 2000 to 2004. Hawaii is second with 167.6 deaths from smoking per year per 100,000.

It is “;great news”; for Hawaii and Utah, Zysman said.

“;What that means, however, is annually for Hawaii it's an estimated 1,160 lives lost per year,”; she pointed out. “;For Utah it was 1,155.”;

Deaths attributed to smoking were up to 1,200 and 1,300 per year in the 1990s, Zysman said. “;The reason we see drops is because of our prevention program to help people quit smoking.”;

Hawaii, Utah and Minnesota - with the third-lowest death rate from smoking - “;have done an excellent job,”; she said.

“;These programs are clearly working. We need to continue funding them.”;

  Hawaii is not spending the $15.2 million per year recommended by the CDC for tobacco cessation programs. But the $11 million allocated “;is way better than a lot of states,”; Zysman said.

  Many states have raided their multimillion-dollar tobacco settlement funds to help deal with dire economic problems.

The coalition also is concerned about retaining its prevention funding as legislators wrestle with Hawaii's critical economy.

“;We're not asking for more,”; Zysman said, “;just maintenance. We've got good hard evidence to say the programs are doing good.”;

New youth smoking rates reported in November were below 10 percent, the lowest ever, she said.

“;We've got healthier kids and healthier elders. That won't be the case if we lose money.”;

Death rates and youth smoking have gone back up in states that had good prevention programs and cut back on funding, she said.

The CDC focused on lung cancer and 18 other diseases caused by smoking cigarettes in calculating death rates from death certificate data.

Kentucky and West Virginia had the highest death rates from smoking. The national annual average for the smoking death rate was 263 per 100,000. Kentucky's rate was about 371 deaths out of every 100,000 adults age 35 and older.

Males had a higher annual rate of smoking deaths than females in all states, but rates declined for men in 49 states since the late 1990s and declined for women in only 32 states, the CDC reported.

Zysman said various ideas are being explored to raise money for Hawaii's prevention programs, such as increasing taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products.

The tax on noncigarette tobacco products - 40 percent of the purchase price - has not increased since 1965, she said.

Meanwhile, tobacco companies are developing a lot of new products that appear targeted at women and kids, she said.

They include such items as a spitless tobacco marketed in a tea bag-like packet, and flavored and dissolvable tobacco strips, she said. They might be appealing but they have the same nicotine, she said.