Efforts to Help Smokers Quit Stall Under Trump

The ads were jarring: a man with a hole in his throat where his larynx, or voice box, had once been.A woman whose teeth and jaw had been removed after oral cancer.

Another woman speaking in a robotic voice, which was altered when her larynx was removed: “I wish I’d never seen a cigarette in my entire life.” A black screen followed, saying she died two days later.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 14-year ad campaign, called Tips From Former Smokers, was highly memorable and, research shows, highly effective in motivating people to quit.Last year, though, as tobacco companies gave millions to political organizations related to the Trump administration, the campaign went dark.There is no definitive evidence linking the donations to the lapse of the ad campaign.

But the decision to terminate it was one of several steps the administration has taken to unravel federal government antismoking initiatives that had long had bipartisan support during a time when the administration has delivered significant policy wins to tobacco companies.The C.D.C.’s Office on Smoking and Health, which managed the campaign and worked with states on smoking cessation measures, has been shut down for more than a year, after its staff was laid off as part of the administration’s government downsizing efforts.While hundreds of other federal health employees were eventually rehired, the smoking office staff members have not been.Even after Congress restored the office’s funding late last summer, its employees have remained on paid leave as litigation challenging the firings plays out.In recent weeks, under pressure from Congress, the C.D.C.

has given states diminished funding to air ads from the campaign’s archive, but the federal government will not produce new ads or negotiate contracts for them to air nationwide.The ads had prompted millions of smokers to dial state quit lines for help on how to stop smoking.

In interviews, people who ran quit lines in several...