Tobacco Settlement: Fraud on the Public?

Categorized | Economy, Legal, Politics as Usual

Tobacco Settlement: Fraud on the Public?

by Hans Bader
January 11, 2008 @ 2:29 pm

USA Today hammers state governments for using money from the 1998 multistate tobacco settlement on everything but tobacco-related illnesses and smoking prevention:

“With news cameras clicking a decade ago, state officials proudly touted their success in securing settlements worth $246 billion over 25 years from cigarette-makers. The money, the attorneys general vowed, would go to prevent smoking, particularly among teens.

Today, most of those promises have, so to speak, gone up in smoke.

States are spending their tobacco settlement money on everything . . . but smoking prevention.”

Meanwhile, trial lawyers hired by the states have received $15 billion (not million, billion) to date, even though some of them did little more than file copycat lawsuits.

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Phil 12 months ago 1 point
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Yes, money that the states got to combat tobacco use, especially for teens, has been squandered. I read that one state even went so far as to use some of the money to subsidize buildings used for tobacco farming. If the money had been used the way it was supposed to be used, the teen smoking rate would likely be lower than it is. The states that have used the money responsibly have reduced their smoking rates much more than the ones who have not used the money properly. The taxpayers should be demanding some accountability from their state governments as to why the tobacco settlement money was used inappropriately.

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