Bucks County, Pa., Anti-Smoking Project Finally to Receive Settlement Funds. - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

By Peter Sigal, The Philadelphia Inquirer Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

Dec. 27--In 20 years as a respiratory therapist at Grand View Hospital in Sellersville, Ron Rolan treated thousands of lung cancer and emphysema patients, many of whom were close to death.

But even the knowledge that smoking had probably shortened their lives was not enough to make them quit, he said.

'Nicotine addiction is the hardest thing to quit,' he said. 'It's not just in your head; it's something your body craves.'

Now, instead of watching helplessly as people die from smoking, Rolan is working to make sure they never start.

In June, he went to work for the Bucks County Tobacco Control Project as the agency's first schools coordinator. He is responsible for implementing tobacco-control programs for county children from preschool through high school, using hundreds of thousands of dollars allocated to the county from the 1998 national tobacco settlement.

'My passion is to teach kids about the addiction of nicotine,' Rolan said. But, he added, 'I'm not the answer to make kids quit smoking. I can only complement what teachers are doing.'

Starting this fall, Bucks County will receive $1.4 million a year over three years for all tobacco control programs, with about $10 million more to come through 2025. Although the deal with the nation's largest tobacco firms was reached four years ago, it took until this year for the General Assembly to approve a plan for spending the money.

The county is focusing on eight areas: youth, health, community, workplace, environment, schools, countermarketing and law enforcement, said Marlin L. Williams, director of the Tobacco Control Project.

Rolan has one advantage over other county program leaders who deal with the adult population: up-to-date information on tobacco use and attitudes. The biannual Pennsylvania Youth Survey -- the most recent is from 2000, with this year's expected soon -- found that 16.7 percent of county youth had smoked in the previous 30 days, a good indicator of regular use.

The survey, by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, examines drug and alcohol use among sixth through 12th graders. It found that as children get older, they see smoking as less of an evil and are more likely to take up the habit themselves. In Bucks County, the survey found, 34.4 percent of high school seniors had smoked in the previous 30 days.

Many questions about adult tobacco use, such as how many workplaces in the county allow smoking, are impossible to answer because they have never been studied, Williams said.

'It makes it very difficult to evaluate things,' he said. As such, one of the first things the countywide project will do is try to establish baselines to measure future improvement.

The county's tobacco-control efforts are linked to 'Healthy People 2010,' a set of goals created by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For Pennsylvania, the goal by that year is to have only 12 percent of adults smoking, compared with 25 percent now.

Williams admits that tobacco education programs, anti-smoking billboards, and stepped-up enforcement of cigarette laws will not have an immediate effect on smoking rates.

But small steps are being taken. Last year, educators from the Bucks County Health Department taught hundreds of preschoolers about the dangers of secondhand smoke, a program that will be expanded. This year, county police departments will receive money to set up stings that target merchants who sell to minors.

For his part, Rolan is pitching the value of long-term tobacco control programs to county school districts.

To reach youths, Rolan will have to overcome what he calls the mixed message of cigarette advertising, in which the surgeon general's warnings co-exist with promotions that advertise a youthful, exciting lifestyle.

Some schools, he added, are reluctant to see tobacco use as more than a disciplinary issue.

'A lot of schools don't really think of tobacco as a major problem,' he said. 'My message is that it's well proven that tobacco is a gateway. If you can teach kids skills to say not to tobacco, they can say no to alcohol, promiscuous sex, and other dangerous behaviors.'

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