Penn State students who wish to quit smoking may find the task more difficult this year due to the recent 25 percent reduction in funding for Pennsylvania's tobacco prevention and cessation programs for 2006.

According to the Centre County Tobacco Prevention Partnership, $99,852 has been cut from the $350,740 budget previously designated to tobacco prevention in Centre County.

Diana Ramos, a University Health Services community health educator who handles the cessation programs, said to provide the maximum quality of service to students, the program needs to offer a multifaceted approach to quitting.

This year, Ramos' program does not have enough money to fund training and trips to conferences, meaning the program cannot implement new strategies or explore alternative options to help students stop smoking, she said.

"We were planning on buying software which uses an image enhancer to show students what smoking does to the aging process," Ramos said. "It would have shown the effects that smoking would have on their appearance at 30 or 40 years old, but the program was expensive, and so the available funds have limited us from purchasing the new software."

Alan Snider, president of the Association of Tobacco Control Professionals of Pennsylvania, said the state has dropped from seventh to fifteenth in the ranking of states that provide the most funding for tobacco-addiction prevention.

Snider said tobacco companies spend more than $42 million on marketing, which works out to spending about $28 for every $1 the state spends on prevention tactics.

"So it is easy to see why a reduction in the small amount of money already being spent by the state is going to have a large impact everywhere," he said.

Centre County Drug and Alcohol Program Administrator Cathy Arbogast said there is going to be a cutback in the spending for tobacco education in local schools, advertising and marketing, tobacco cessation and community programs.

"Penn State University Health Services provide quite a few programs to help students quit smoking cigarettes. However, now with the budget cut in place there are going to be certain parts of the program that UHS will no longer be able to offer students, since there will not be enough funding," Arbogast said.

Although the reduction in funding for tobacco prevention is causing difficulty for some Centre County organizations, the money that is being cut will be used for people's welfare, said Linda LaSalle, the UHS coordinator of educational services.

The money being cut from the tobacco prevention fund is being reallocated to expand the adultBasic insurance program in Pennsylvania, she said.

AdultBasic is an insurance program for the working poor that provides a basic benefit package for individuals who would otherwise be uninsured, Melissa Fox, Pennsylvania Insurance Department spokeswoman, said.

There are more than 93,000 individuals enrolled in the adultBasic program statewide.

Centre County has 298 people enrolled in adultBasic and 1,054 on the waiting list, Fox added.

Despite the continued use of the funds for a necessary program, Arbogast said she is still concerned about the future of tobacco prevention funding in Centre County.

"The problem is that when you make do with a much smaller amount of money it sends a message to officials that you never really needed the larger amount of money in the first place," Arbogast said.