US States Failing On Tobacco Programs
Posted on: Tuesday, 18 November 2008, 14:30 CST
Ten years after the huge legal settlement with the tobacco industry, U.S. states have only spent about 3 percent of their earnings on tobacco prevention and cessation programs, according to health advocacy groups on Tuesday.
The deal was put in place to restrict cigarette advertising practices. It requires tobacco companies to make annual payments to the states in perpetuity, with total payments estimated at $246 billion over the first 25 years.
States have received $79.2 billion of the settlement and another $124.3 billion from tobacco taxes thus far. But they have only spent $6.5 billion of it on prevention programs, according to the report issued by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, American Lung Association and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
No state is currently funding tobacco prevention programs at the levels recommended by the U.S. government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and only nine are funding such efforts at even half the recommended level, according to the report.
In November 1998, 46 states settled their lawsuits against the major tobacco companies to recover tobacco-related healthcare costs, joining four states -- Mississippi, Texas, Florida and Minnesota -- that had reached earlier, individual settlements.
"This report underscores the need for state officials to take a hard look at the devastating impact of tobacco use in their own communities," M. Cass Wheeler, chief executive officer of the American Heart Association, said in a statement.
"They must reassess their priorities and use the money for what it was originally intended - to fund prevention and cessation programs and break the cycle of addiction."
The CDC said in a report last week that the number of U.S. adults who smoke has dropped below 20 percent for the first time on record, although cigarettes still kill 443,000 Americans annually.
Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports
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