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Use Tobacco Suit Funds More Wisely |
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Use tobacco suit funds more wisely Apr 27, 2008 - 04:05:05 CDT - Bismarck Tribune North Dakota deals with the problem of people using tobacco by giving a lot of money to water projects and public school education. A bit of money goes to deal with the problem of people's use of tobacco. How much sense does that make? The attorneys general of 46 states went to court a decade ago in an attempt to get major tobacco companies to pay up for the damage their product had done to residents of those states and six U.S. territories. They got a settlement. Its terms were complicated, but in general it's accurate to say that there was a $208 billion settlement. Other states had conducted their own litigation previously, Florida initiating in 1994. When the major settlement was reached, the states that hadn't been direct participants signed on. There was up-front money that went to the states, $12.7 billion, in 1998. Then the tobacco companies continued to make payments. In the two-year period of 2007-09, North Dakota will receive about $70 million and will continue to be paid until 2025. But not a lot of that money received by our state goes to programs to persuade people not to smoke or chew the weed. The 1999 Legislature made a choice and set it in the concrete of state law: The water development trust fund gets 45 percent of the money and interest earned as long as the payments keep coming; another 45 percent of the take goes to a trust fund for public schools; and the 10 percent left over goes to a community health trust fund administered by the state Health Department. Not all of that fraction goes to efforts to get people off - or never using - tobacco. That makes little sense. States were free to deploy the settlement money as they chose. North Dakota milked it as a cash cow. We as a state have plenty of money for water projects and now have a pretty good way of supporting public education. There is never enough money for wellness programs. Heidi Heitkamp was the attorney general who negotiated with big tobacco on our behalf. She and others want to increase the percentage of master settlement funds that actually have something to do with the problem of tobacco use. They've come up with an initiative to force a change in the law. It's been to the attorney general's office for review and on to the secretary of state's office. It went back to the initiators for final work and should be ready Monday for Secretary of State Al Jaeger to give final review and approval of the format of a petition to go out for signatures. The backers' hope is that everything necessary will be accomplished so that the measure can be on the November ballot. Heitkamp said that an average of $2.2 million of the payment to North Dakota each year is spent on programs dealing with tobacco use prevention or cessation. The proposal is to spend $9 million a year. That doesn't sound like much. But $9 million annually is the amount the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculates this state should be spending. Yes, at least that. Bismarck Tribune Editorial Board 04-27-08 |
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