Jump to full article: USA Today, 2009-01-14
Intro: Case in point: Kentucky.
This budget year, the state will take in nearly $300 million in cigarette taxes and settlement funds. But it will spend only about $4 million — a little more than 1% — on tobacco control programs.
Kentucky also has some of the nation's weakest restrictions on smoking in public, some of the stingiest Medicaid funding for programs to quit and one of the lowest cigarette taxes, according to a report released Tuesday by the American Lung Association.
Not surprisingly, Kentucky leads the nation with the highest adult smoking rate, 28%, and about 26% of Kentucky's high school students smoke in a nation where the high-school rate tumbled to 20% in 2007. These teens are tomorrow's addicts, and many will become tomorrow's victims of lung cancer and heart disease. . .
The lung association, which ranked all 50 states on their anti-smoking efforts, gave six others — Alabama, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia — failing grades across the board. In all but one (South Carolina), the high-school smoking rate tops the national average.
State leaders don't have to look far to see what a little money and a lot more commitment can do. In Maine, strong anti-smoking laws and a $2 tax per pack have helped cut the high-school smoking rate to 14% . . .
Money from the 1998 settlement will flow for at least 15 more years. If state leaders show the brains and gumption not to squander it, they can save millions of lives — and millions of dollars that go to treat smoking-related illnesses.
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