Subscribe to the RSS feed.Report finds most states - including Oregon - inadequately spending tobacco settlement funds
By: CHP | Posted on: November 18th, 2008. | 
4 comments |
Categories: Economic Issues • Policies and Laws • Public Health • Did You Know?
Ten years after the after the November 1998 state tobacco settlement, Oregon is one of many states breaking promises to its citizens and their kids, a new report says.
At the time of the 1998 tobacco settlement, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that Oregon spend $43 million per year on tobacco prevention and cessation.
Instead, Oregon is now spending $9.1 million a year on these programs.
Oregon ranks 27th in the nation in per-capita funding for programs to protect kids from tobacco, according to the national report on states’ funding of tobacco prevention programs. The report, titled “A Decade of Broken Promises,“ was released by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Lung Association and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Other findings:
Tobacco companies spend more than $135 million a year marketing in Oregon - nearly 15 times what the state spends on tobacco prevention.
Oregon this year will collect $335 million from the tobacco settlement and tobacco taxes, but will spend less than 3 percent of it on tobacco prevention.
“Oregon has made a modest investment in programs to protect kids from tobacco, but is currently spending less than a quarter of what the CDC recommends,“ said Matthew L. Myers, President of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
On Nov. 23, 1998, 46 states settled their lawsuits against the nation’s major tobacco companies to recover tobacco-related health care costs, joining four states (Mississippi, Texas, Florida and Minnesota) that had reached earlier settlements. These settlements require the tobacco companies to make annual payments to the states in perpetuity, with total payments estimated at $246 billion over the first 25 years.
Read the entire report here.
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I’m a school nurse working for a district of about 1800 students, K-12.
I’d like to see the numbers: how much tobacco money do we have , what are we spending it on, and where is the remainder ?
Most children in public schools K-12 receive information in health class about the risks of tobacco.
I would like to see money spent on cessation programs for adolescents. It’s a shame to simply give the child who has been caught smoking an MIP and send them on their way. It would make more sense to enroll the child in a cessation program - with the parent.