In 2006, Alaska desperately needed cash to complete a museum featuring a mummified bison and other natural wonders of the frozen north. So the state dipped into its share of the landmark 1998 tobacco settlement.
The billions that began flowing from cigarette makers to the states a decade ago also helped outfit the Niagara County, N.Y., golf course with new carts and sprinklers. And the money has gone toward college scholarships in Michigan, tax breaks in Illinois and Ohio, a dog catcher in Lincoln, Neb., and jails and schools elsewhere around the country.
Despite the promises of politicians and policymakers, states and counties have spent the lion’s share of the settlement money on things that have nothing to do with public health or smoking, even as once-falling teen smoking rates have stagnated.
Of $61.5 billion divided among 46 states between 2000 and 2006, only 30 percent was spent on health care, according to federal Government Accountability Office data analyzed by The Associated Press. Less than 4 percent went to anti-smoking efforts.
States defend the myriad ways they have spent their tobacco money, still being paid out in annual installments and is expected to total $294 billion over 25 years in today’s dollars.
They note that no strings were attached to the pact reached on Nov. 23, 1998, and that anti-smoking campaigns do not cost billions. But treating smoking-related illnesses of people in public-health programs such as Medicare and Medicaid already had.
Gregory Connolly, director of Massachusetts’ Tobacco Control Program from 1993 to 2003, said the failure to funnel more of the money into anti-smoking campaigns was a retreat from implicit promises.
“Every state court case had that built into it, that we’re here for the kids,” said Connolly, now a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. “But the legislatures said, ‘This is our money. Thanks for suing, but we’re going to decide how to spend the money.’ “
