You might think Beavers was smoking something. After all, the billions from the settlement were supposed to help fund smoking-prevention campaigns and lessen the fiscal burden states bear by caring for sick smokers. Indeed, pundits noted the irony of Big Tobacco, in effect, paying the states to put them out of business.
Only it hasn’t worked out that way. In the last four years, North Carolina has spent almost three quarters of the settlement money it’s received on tobacco marketing and production. Granted, the state had decided to spend some of its money to help farmers’ transition to other crops. But instead, it’s mostly being used to modernize tobacco farms. Recently, Beavers got $25,000 to defray the costs of 12 new curing bins he installed last year. And a Charlotte Observer investigation detailed how the state used $43 million of the $59 million it’s spent so far (North Carolina is slated to receive a total of $4.6 billion) on things like building a modern tobacco auction house outside Asheville. It even gave $15,000 to a tobacco museum to fund a video about the history of the crop.
But at least North Carolina is spending some of its money on health care. Many other states aren’t even doing that. Michigan, Missouri, Tennessee and the District of Columbia haven’t committed to spending any of their settlement money on anti-smoking campaigns. Fourteen other states, including tobacco producers like Kentucky and South Carolina, have set aside minimal amounts for prevention. “This is just unconscionable,” says Matthew Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. “These states were given an opportunity to make their citizens safer and healthier. Instead they’re just funding the poison.” Deborah Bryan, a North Carolina American Lung Association official whose father died of emphysema, sees the issue more starkly: “What we’re talking about is lives and suffering.”
The problem is the way the 1998 settlement was negotiated. With so many states involved, no one wanted to be tied to prescriptions for how to spend the money. At the time, it didn’t seem like a stretch to imagine governors and legislatures spending the money responsibly; after all, the late 1990s featured seemingly endless surpluses and an ever-rising stock market. But in these more cash-strapped times, many states seem to be viewing their portions of the settlement as huge slabs of pork. In New York $700,000 of settlement funds bought a sprinkler system at an upstate public golf course. Alabama used millions of dollars to lure new industry, including a bid to entice carmakers such as Honda and Mercedes-Benz to set up shop; the state also put some of the money toward fighting satanic worship in public schools. Nevada used $2 million to convert its public-television stations to digital broadcasting. Indeed, a National Conference of State Legislatures report says that only 5 percent of the $21 billion the tobacco industry paid out between 2000 and 2002 went toward anti-smoking efforts.
Even Keith Beavers is appalled. “The states are using this money as if it was just another way to get revenue,” he says. “There was a lot of things this money was supposed to be doing.” While Beavers may not agree, paying for curing bins probably wasn’t one of them.
