If the Ohio House version of the 2006-2007 budget and past actions of the legislature serve as any indication, more funds meant to help prevent smoking in Ohio will be redirected to fill in the holes of the state budget.
This is the third consecutive budget that legislators have borrowed from the fund to cover other costs. Promises to start replacing the money in 2013 and ending in 2015 have been made, but some officials doubt whether those promises will be kept because the politicians making them will not be in office in 2013, said Beth Schieber, spokeswoman for the Ohio Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Foundation.
The tobacco fund resulted from the multi-state Master Settlement Agreement reached five years ago. This national, out-of-court settlement with tobacco companies resulted after a number of states filed lawsuits in state court against the tobacco industry to secure reimbursement for increasing expenditures, which the states incurred to cover tobacco-related illness. Soon after, 41 other states, including Ohio, joined a national effort to settle all pending class-action, state and government lawsuits against the tobacco industry.
The Ohio Tobacco Use Prevention and Control Foundation was created by money from the settlement in an effort to cut medical expenses by preventing smoking. It was to be endowed with $1.2 billion, which would be paid (starting in 2000) throughout six to seven years and be used to reduce the death and destruction caused by tobacco use Ñ the reason for the lawsuit in the first place
Schieber said.
To date, the foundation has received its first payment -Ñ in 2000, for $330 million, which has provided money for TV and billboard advertisements as part of stand (OhioÕs tobacco counter-marketing campaign), a successful telephone quit line, plus millions of dollars in grants for community programs at schools and hospitals.
About $350 million has been diverted to the general revenue fund since 2002 to cover unrelated costs, Schieber said. The lack of funding has left the organizationÕs board of directors two options: spend less so that the programs can last or continue to spend at the current level, which is enough to be effective.
Contention remains about whether the money from the settlement was meant to cover costs incurred by the state because of tobacco-related illness or to fund future programs, which is why some legislators are feeling little remorse for depleting the fund.
It depends on who you ask. There are differences of opinion. My personal desire is to spend some on prevention and some on tobacco-related illnesses said State Rep.
Jimmy Stewart, R-Athens.
An estimated $23 million will be taken from the tobacco fund for the E-check program, which tests auto emissions, and about $62 million to cover the cost of transitioning for a fee-based system service to managed care for Medicaid patients. The reason the transition will cost money is that under a fee-for-service system, the state pays after the service is rendered. In contrast, services under managed care are paid up-front.
So, during the transition period, the state will be covering both costs simultaneously, Schieber said.
Stewart is against spending tobacco money on E-check. One could make an argument that those two are related (air pollution and the effects of smoking) but I am not comfortable with that argument.
Aside from what the money is being diverted to, Schieber said taking funds away from smoking prevention is counterproductive Ñ 17 percent of MedicaidÕs budget is caused by smoking-related illnesses.
There is some evidence that the smoking-prevention programs are working.
Adult smoking rates are declining faster in Ohio than nationally.
An estimated 375,000 fewer Ohioans were smoking in 2003 than in 2004, according to the 2004 Adult Tobacco Study, a collaborative research effort between the foundation and the Ohio Department of Health and the Research Triangle Institute, with assistance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
17
Archives
Megan Cotten
