HOW STATES PROFIT FROM TOBACCO SCAM

When last we heard from the state attorneys general,back in November,they
were patting themselves on the back for having successfully mau-maued the
tobacco industry into the largest civil settlement in U.S. history,a
staggering $206 billion over the next 25 years.

The 46 state AGs who signed onto the historic settlement pledged that the
lucre would go to smoking-prevention programs to save America's children
from the deadly scourge.

That is why the public ought to be outraged to learn the various and sundry
purposes to which state and local officials around the country plan to put
their tobacco windfalls.

North Dakota, for instance, plans to finance a new state morgue out of its
settlement loot. West Virginia plans to underwrite a public employees'
insurance account. Montana plans to fund a juvenile delinquent boot camp.
Alabama plans to set aside tobacco money to educate kids about gangs and
satanic worship.

In California, the Legislature generously decided to split its tobacco
booty with the counties and cities, with no specification as to how they
are to use the money.

So Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan has talked about using the settlement
money for "sidewalks improvement." And San Diego Mayor Susan Golding has
suggested that the money be used to build a bright and shiny new library.

Now, there's nothing wrong with state or local governments spending general
revenues on morgues or libraries or most any other purpose elected
officials see fit.

But the tobacco settlement money was supposed to go to a specific purpose -
smoking prevention - and it's hard to see how the funding of anti-satanic
worship education programs or sidewalks have anything to do with keeping
kids from smoking.

And the aforementioned states and cities are hardly the only ones
participating in this tobacco settlement bait-and switch. A just-released
report, conducted by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the American
Heart Association, says that most of the states plan to use some or all of
their windfall for non-health-related purposes.

Indeed, the report says that, of the 27 states that have decided what to do
with the tobacco settlement money, only six have provided enough new
funding for truly comprehensive smoking prevention and cessation programs.

Ten others have set aside funds for smoking prevention, according to the
study, but each of those states will spend far less than the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention recommends for an effective program - even
though their settlement windfalls provide more than enough money to do so.

But the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and American Heart Association have
identified the wrong culprit in this tobacco settlement bait-and-switch.

The tobacco industry is not at fault. It is holding up its end of the
agreement it struck with the 46 state attorneys general back in November.
In fact, cigarette makers just raised the cost of smokes this week by 18
cents a pack, on top of the 45-cents-a-pack increase in November.

The higher price for a pack of smokes not is only supposed to dampen demand
for cigarettes, it also will go to cover the cost of the
multibillion-dollar tobacco settlement, the proceeds of which are supposed
to go to programs that further drive down demand for tobacco products.

That state and local governments are oh-so-willing to use their tobacco
windfalls for purposes that have nothing to do with thinning the ranks of
the nation's smokers - particularly kids - shows that the legal jihad
against the tobacco industry really wasn't so much about protecting public
health - a the state attorneys general sanctimoniously claimed - as it was
about filling state coffers with tobacco money.

The tobacco litigation was a fraud. And the state attorneys general who
pursued the litigation, who insisted they were motivated strictly out of
concern that young Americans were falling prey to the demon tobacco
industry, who have stood silently by as avaricious state and local
governments propose to spend the tobacco settlement for myriad non-health
purposes, are hypocrites.