Tobacco use in Utah continues to decrease, especially among high school students whose experimentation rate has reached an all-time low, according to a new report from the Utah Department of Health.

In 2005, 25 percent of Utah teens reported experimenting with smoking, down nearly 50 percent from 1991, the first time teen experimentation was measured, the report states.

"It's good news because we know that if fewer teens are actually playing around and if it's seen as less socially acceptable, the likelihood is that long term we'll see fewer kids actually taking up the addiction," said Lena Dibble of the health department's Tobacco Prevention and Control Program.

The state initiated aggressive tobacco prevention programs in 1999 following the signing of the master settlement agreement with big tobacco companies. Since that time, Utah's adult smoking rate has declined by 17 percent, the youth smoking rate has dropped 38 percent and the number of Utah children exposed to secondhand smoke in their homes has been cut in half, according to the 2006 Tobacco Prevention and Control in Utah annual report released Wednesday.

The study credits the gains to the state's TRUTH anti-tobacco media campaign, of which Utahns are well aware. The report notes that 98 percent of Utah teenagers and 97 percent of adult smokers recalled hearing or seeing anti-tobacco ads in the past month. More than half of the adult smokers, the report notes, thought about quitting after seeing the ads.

That means the media campaign is achieving its goal, Dibble said.

"We need to get people's attention and make them think about it and create a strong non-smoking brand and identity," she said.

Still, according to Wednesday's report, more than 200,000 Utahns continue to use tobacco and more than 1,100 adults die each year as a result of the use. Smoking in Utah costs approximately $530 million in annual health-related economic costs and productivity losses, the report states.

Those numbers could swing upwards, Dibble said, if anti-smoking advocates aren't vigilant in their efforts.

"We haven't seen a slowing down of the tobacco industry's efforts," she said. "They just keep spending and spending and spending and finding new ways to promote their products, so we have to keep doing what we're doing.

"We really have to keep up our efforts. We need to maintain what we're doing and think smart and really target the high-risk populations."

Among those high-risk Utahns are pregnant women, whose likelihood of smoking varies by age and education. Although the state has seen a drop in the number of pregnant women who smoke, down 23 percent between 1999 and 2004, those with a high school education or less have a smoking rate of 10 percent or higher.

Utah receives between $30 million and $35 million annually from the master settlement agreement. About $4 million of that goes to the Department of Health's Tobacco Prevention and Control Program. The department gets another $3 million from cigarette taxes as well as about $2 million in matching federal funds.

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E-mail: awelling@desnews.com