States Have Spent Only 3 Percent of Tobacco Revenues to Fight Tobacco Use
Jump to full article: Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, 2008-11-18
Intro: Ten years after reaching more than $246 billion in legal settlements against the tobacco industry, the states have failed to keep their promise to spend a significant portion of the money on programs to protect kids from tobacco and help smokers quit, according to a report released today by a coalition of public health organizations.
A Decade of Broken Promises: The 1998 State Tobacco Settlement Ten Years Later
Executive Summary (PDF)
Full Report (PDF)
Chart: State Rankings (PDF)
Key findings of the report include:
* Over the past 10 years, the states have received $203.5 billion in tobacco-generated revenue — $79.2 billion from the tobacco settlement and $124.3 billion from tobacco taxes. But they have spent only 3.2 percent of their tobacco money — $6.5 billion — on tobacco prevention and cessation programs.
* This year, no state is funding tobacco prevention programs at the levels recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only nine states are funding tobacco prevention at even half the CDC-recommended amount, and 27 states are providing less than a quarter of the recommended funding. (Beginning in fiscal 2010, North Dakota will fund its prevention program at the CDC-recommended level as a result of a state ballot initiative approved on November 4.)
* The limited restrictions on tobacco marketing imposed by the tobacco settlement have failed to curtail the tobacco industry’s ability to aggressively market its products. . . .
The report, titled "A Decade of Broken Promises: The 1998 State Tobacco Settlement Ten Years Later," was released by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Lung Association and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
The 10th anniversary of the settlement comes as recent surveys have shown that the nation has made significant progress in reducing smoking in the past decade, but smoking declines have slowed in recent years. From 1997 to 2007, smoking rates declined by 45 percent among high school students and by 20 percent among adults. But 20 percent of high school students and 19.8 percent of adults still smoke, and tobacco use remains the nation’s leading cause of preventable death, killing more than 400,000 people and costing nearly $100 billion in health care expenditures each year.
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