Opinion: About that tobacco money

With their budgets tight in an election year, states are loath to raise taxes or cut programs to ease financial strains. But some governors and legislators haven't been reluctant to raid a fund that was supposed to have been earmarked for public health projects with long-term benefits.

Almost four years after reaching the $246-billion national legal settlement with the tobacco industry, many states are failing to keep their original promises to use a large chunk of the money to attack the public health problems posed by tobacco use.

Some state legislatures are using the tobacco money for everything but programs to discourage young people from smoking. According to USA Today, North Carolina is spending its share of the lawsuit money to boost tobacco sales, while it has yet to spend a dime of the funds on prevention. South Carolina is spending tobacco money to give relief to tobacco farmers, pay for health care and finance water and sewer projects. Tennessee used most of its settlement money to balance its state budget.

Florida hasn't been immune to such practices either.

Last December, legislators cut 20 percent of the funding from the Florida Tobacco Control Program, which is credited with helping to reduce smoking by 47 percent among middle school students and by 30 percent among high school students in just three years. Even though the highly successful youth prevention program had become a model for the rest of the nation, its funding has been cut by about 57 percent from its initial $70-million in 1998.

According to a state Department of Health report released last October, the budget cuts have reduced the program's effectiveness. Progress is stalling among middle school students, the age group most vulnerable to becoming smokers. Youth and adult tobacco control advocates should continue urging lawmakers to avoid reducing the state program's effectiveness. Their influence kept the state from slashing program funds by almost 40 percent last year.

States have argued they are free to use the settlement money to meet any needs (that's not what they were saying when they opened their legal assault on the tobacco industry). But the issue at stake is about more than short-term budget fixes. Legislators promised state residents in 1998 that they wouldn't squander their opportunity to save lives. They have partially made good on their word with many of the trust funds into which Florida's share of the settlement is allocated, the largest being the Lawton Chiles Endowment Fund. Created in honor of the former governor who fought to secure the settlement, the fund generates interest that pays for health care for children and the elderly.

The tobacco companies coughed up the settlement money, the lawyers satisfied their greed, and the states got their pot of gold. In some states, the only losers are the young smokers.

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