Last week, the Cuomo Administration held a cancer summit, the “New York State Cancer Prevention Summit: Transforming the Cancer Agenda for the Next Generation.”  The stated goal of this summit was to “focus on cancer prevention.”

Like all New Yorkers, I like the idea that the state government is examining the diseases caused by the “c-word” and it is an issue that deserves a summit.

Here are some of the cancer statistics for New York State.  According to the American Cancer Society, it is estimated that there will be nearly 108,000 cancer cases diagnosed in New York this year.  In addition, nearly 35,000 New Yorkers will die from various cancers.  Four cancers account for nearly half of all of these diagnoses and deaths:  breast, colon, prostate, and lung cancers.

In New York, lung cancer is the number one cancer killer resulting in over 8,000 cancer deaths, or roughly one quarter of all cancer deaths.  As we all know, the vast majority of lung cancers are the result of tobacco use.

The American Cancer Society’s statistics only include one form of skin cancer, melanoma.  The other major forms of skin cancer, basal and squamous skin cancers, are usually not life threatening and so are not part of their statistics.  Melanoma is responsible for over three quarters of all skin cancer deaths.

But skin cancer is far and away the most frequently diagnosed cancer, with an estimated 100,000 cases in New York each year.

You would expect that the cancer “summit” would focus on these major cancers as well as examining emerging causes of cancers – those caused by obesity and a sedentary lifestyle for example.

But there was little examination of the state’s policies for fighting cancer.  Since about one half of all cancers are the result of lifestyle choices, and one quarter of all deaths result from tobacco use, how well the state was attacking those problems should have been featured in this summit.

But a thorough review would have found that the cancer-fighting policies of the Cuomo Administration were failing.

As mentioned earlier, the single biggest cancer killer is lung cancer, which is almost entirely due to tobacco use.  Yet, the Cuomo Administration has consistently cut funding for the state’s effort to help smokers to quit and keep kids from starting. The program is modeled on the best practices developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and has demonstrated success, but the state spends less than half of what it did a few years ago.

When it comes to skin cancer, other than educating the public on the dangers of excessive sun exposure, there isn’t a lot that the state can do.  However, when it comes to indoor tanning, the state is doing the minimum.  A few years ago, legislation was passed banning kids under the age of 17 from using indoor tanning salons and requiring that 17 year olds get their parents’ permission to use them.  Why did that law pass?  Because of the growing evidence that indoor tanning was causing a rise in skin cancers and melanoma, particularly among young people.

New York law allows the Health Department to post warnings to alert the public to the dangers of indoor tanning.  Yet, inexplicably, New York has chosen not to use the “c-word” in its warnings – even though they were asked to do so!

Why would they fail to require a warning about skin cancer for indoor tanning?  The only opposition was from the industry itself.  As a result, tanning consumers are deprived of a critically important health warning.

All New Yorkers would likely agree that a top policy effort by all levels of government should be to do what they can to reduce cancer prevalence, help identify cancers early on, and help cancer patients deal with the financial, physical and emotion toll of the treatments.

But doing it is far better than talking about it.  New Yorkers deserve a state government that implements the best practices in its cancer fighting efforts, not annual budgets that seek to slash funding for those programs, or soften warnings due to industry opposition.

Hopefully, the summit will change the Administration’s behavior in attacking cancer.  Lives depend on it.