Chip Taylor

Up in smoke

From the Augusta Chronicle:

The millions of dollars states receive from tobacco companies every year have gone to plugging everything from budget holes to pot holes.

But when it comes to preventing smoking, state governments have dedicated only a small part of their settlement money to getting their residents to kick the habit or avoid it all together.

Not even 5 percent of the $39.5 billion the states have received in the past couple of years has gone toward preventing tobacco use, while lawmakers facing tough budget times used the funds to shoulder up other programs.

Some of the money was used to:

- Help prison inmates participate in religious-based rehabilitation programs

- Give money for textbooks to private schools in Maryland

- Buy new sprinkler systems and golf carts for a golf course in New York

Many states simply dumped the money into their general budget pot or used it to get them through recent lean years.

Even with budget conditions improving for most states, the amount of money spent on curbing the nation's No. 1 cause of preventable death continues to be only a few drops of the cash flooding in from the massive settlement reached with tobacco companies in the late '90s.

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