Where the tobacco money went
Quick View. March 26, 2007.
| 30.0% |
Direct health care services |
| 22.9% |
Balancing state budgets |
| 11.9% |
Not allocated for a specific purpose |
| 7.8% |
Other purposes including economic development for tobacco regions, social services and payments to tobacco growers |
| 7.1% |
General purposes such as law enforcement, community development and legal expenses |
| 6.0% |
Infrastructure-related activities including maintenance on state facilities |
| 5.5% |
Education |
| 5.4% |
Debt services paid by states that securitized settlement funds by selling them to investment firms |
| 3.5% |
Tobacco-control programs including prevention, cessation and counter-marketing |
Money from a major tobacco settlement went to a lot more than just tobacco programs.
In 1998, 46 state attorneys general and four of the nation's largest tobacco companies reached what became known as a Master Settlement Agreement to dispense with lawsuits from those states seeking to recoup the health care costs of treating smoking-related illness. The deal involved an estimated $200 billion in payments over the first 25 years of the agreement, with payments to continue in perpetuity.
A recent study by the Government Accountability Office concluded that the states received $52.6 billion in payments from the MSA from fiscal 2000 to 2005. States spent the money in the following ways:
Source: "Tobacco Settlement: States' Allocation of Payments from Tobacco Companies for Fiscal Years 2000 through 2005," Government Accountability Office, Feb. 27
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Copyright 2007 American Medical Association. All rights reserved.
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