Dora Mills interviewed by MPBN on the value of Maine’s anti-smoking program
Dora Anne Mills, M.D., M.P.H., FAAP, vice president for Clinical Affairs, was interviewed by the Maine Public Broadcasting Network for a news story that aired on January 15, 2015.
Mills provided background on the program that started under her leadership in the mid-1990s, when Maine’s youth smoking rates were the highest in the nation. Maine’s program became known as one of the most effective in the country, with youth smoking rates plummeting by 67% through 2013, from 40% to 13% of high school students smoking.
She compared the continuation of the state’s anti-tobacco programs to a vaccine, commenting, "Once these kids and young adults become addicted to tobacco, it is extremely hard to get them to quit. So the time to immunize them is during their childhood adolescence and young adulthood. And these tobacco programs do that and do that very successfully."
Mills also noted that in other states that have instituted such programs and then discontinued them, "the smoking rates go back up."