Jump to full article: Yakima (WA) Herald-Republic, 2009-10-08
Author: Leah Beth Ward Yakima Herald-Republic
Intro: A leading researcher of secondhand smoke sharply criticized the governor and the Legislature on Wednesday for cutting tobacco-control programs nearly in half, saying the cost to the health-care system will quickly overcome any short-term savings.
"Gov. Gregoire is no longer the anti-tobacco governor," Stanton Glantz, professor of cardiology at the University of California, San Francisco, told a group of public health professionals meeting at the Yakima Convention Center.
"The fact that she let the program be gutted means she's just riding on the old coattails."
Gov. Chris Gregoire made her name as state attorney general in 1998 by leading the states in negotiating a master settlement with tobacco companies that poured billions into state coffers nationwide.
That settlement still brings in about $120 million a year to Washington state, with most going to pay for state-subsidized health care.
But the 2009 Legislature cut 43 percent from the state's $28.5 million-a-year tobacco-control program
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