The landmark 1998 agreement between all 50 U.S. states and the titans of the tobacco industry was designed to compensate the states for years of smoking-related health expenses. But a new report says the states are only using about 5 percent of settlement money for smoking prevention efforts.
State attorneys general who negotiated the $200 billion-plus agreement expected much of the money to go for smoking prevention programs. But the report by the
National Conference of State Legislators finds states plan to spend more than half of already-paid settlement money during fiscal years 2000 to 2002 in ways unrelated to smoking, according to this story from CBSNews.com.
"They act like this money just fell out of heaven or something," says Michael Moore, attorney general of Mississippi. "There's no connection between the way they're spending this money on highways or tax cuts or
whatever the political whim of the day is, and the public health fight that we the attorneys general of this country fought."
In its report, the National Conference of State Legislatures analyzed the states' plans for their shares of the tobacco money during the fiscal years 2000 through 2002, according to the CBS story.
Of the $21 billion being doled out during that period, the report found:
- 36.1 percent had been set aside for health care.
- 26.0 percent went to bolster endowments or state budget reserves.
- 9.5 percent was to be spent on schools or youth programs.
- 5.0 percent was to go toward tobacco prevention.
- 4.5 percent was to be spent on research.
- 3.2 percent was to be used to assist tobacco growers and
communities affected by the reduced quotas from tobacco
companies, in most cases by offering education and training in
other fields, the story says.
Several states are "tapping their tobacco settlement payments to
make up shortfalls in their state budgets and bolster programs that
have nothing to do with tobacco," the CBS story says.
