States devoting less tobacco settlement money to health

Associated Press ^ | 3-22-04 | NANCY ZUCKERBROD

[Oldeconomybuyer]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- States are increasingly using their $206 billion settlement with cigarette makers to plug holes in their budgets, congressional auditors said Monday.

State officials said at the time of the settlement in 1998 that their goal was to recover the cost of treating sick smokers, but the General Accounting Office found that just 24 percent of last year's settlement earnings was spent on health-related initiatives.

[aruanan]

No kidding. Who didn't see this miles away? In Florida they promised to use the money for medical research and started to fund it, but then, when the market wasn't performing as well as people had expected, cut the money and demanded that researchers return money that had already been spent.

[DumpsterDiver]

Congress included a provision in the 2002 farm bill requiring the General Accounting Office to examine annually how the states that joined the master settlement agreement spend the money.

Now why did they bother to do that when "...the agreement didn't require states to allocate the money toward anything specific"?