MA: JUMP IN CIGARETTE SALES TIED TO SEPT. 11 ATTACKS

Source: Boston (MA) Globe
Date: Thursday, January 24, 2002
Author: Frank Phillips, Globe Staff
URL: here

After nearly a decade of declines, cigarette sales jumped 13 percent in
Massachusetts during the last three months of 2001 - a startling reversal
that some specialists attribute to increased anxiety after the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11.

''The increase in tobacco use in Massachusetts is directly related to the
events of September 11th,'' said Lori Fresina, a Cancer Society
spokeswoman. ''That is the only explanation for a spike of that
significance.''

Before the jump, cigarette sales in the state had dropped steadily since
1993. That year, the state implemented a $48 million-a-year tobacco
education program that is funded by a voter-approved, 25 cent-per-pack tax
and with money from the 1998 US tobacco industry settlement with the
states.

The recent jump in cigarette sales is the biggest quarterly increase
ever.

Joan Hansen, the director of a tobacco treatment program at Manet Community
Health Center in Quincy, said she has seen a sudden influx of smokers
recently - many of whom had been through her program before, but relapsed
after the Sept. 11 attacks.

''September 11th absolutely made a big difference,'' Hansen said. . .

The same trend is appearing across the country. A national survey done in
October for the drug firm GlaxoSmithKline and the American Cancer Society
found that smokers increased their cigarette use by 75 percent after the
attacks, anthrax scares, and security crackdown.

The same study showed that 19 percent of those who had quit relapsed, and
another 6 percent took up smoking for the first time.

The poll of 2,018 adults was done for the Great American SmokeOut event and
has not been officially released.