Burning Money

By HOWARD MARKEL
Published: August 22, 2005

IN the late 1990's, the tobacco companies made a historic legal settlement with every state and the District of Columbia, agreeing to pay $246 billion over 25 years for tobacco prevention and cessation programs. In the last five years, the states have received $40.7 billion in tobacco settlement revenue but have devoted only 5 percent of this money to fighting the tobacco epidemic.

# Alabama has spent more than $1 million of this money on boot camps for juvenile delinquents, alternative schools and metal detectors and surveillance cameras for public schools.

# Illinois has used $315 million for property tax relief and an earned-income tax rebate.

# Michigan, which spends no money on tobacco prevention or cessation, has used 75 percent of its tobacco revenue to provide $2,500 college scholarships to high school students.

# New York has used $700,000 to buy golf carts and an irrigation and sprinkler system for a public golf course in Niagara County.

# In North Carolina, 75 percent of the tobacco settlement money went to provide assistance to the tobacco-producing community.

# North Dakota spent about 45 percent of its settlement on water resources and flood control projects.

# Virginia has spent $12 million to lay fiber-optic lines for broadband cable in southern sections of the state.

This lawsuit was never intended to balance ailing state budgets, let alone buy golf carts, cable lines and security cameras. Voters, millions of smokers who want to quit and millions more we want to keep from ever smoking ought to ask their legislators where the money went.

Howard Markel, a pediatrician and historian of medicine at the University of Michigan, is the author of "When Germs Travel."