The Case for a Concerted Push to Reduce Place-Based Disparities in Smoking-Related Cancers

In this issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, Lortet-Tieulent and colleagues¹ demonstrate the grim consequences of state-level disparities in smoking prevalence. They identify substantial disparities in the smoking-attributable cancer mortality among US states. As the authors suggest, it is likely that only a small amount of the variation in smoking-attributable cancer mortality is due to differences in population demographic characteristics among states. Rather, most of the disparity in state smoking-attributable cancer mortality is driven by the inequitable distribution of strong tobacco control policies across states and the uneven level of funding for state tobacco control programs.