KHI News Service
TOPEKA, Jan.
8
The
Tobacco Free Kansas Coalition
plans to ask legislators to spend previously unexpected tobacco settlement money on programs it says could save the state millions in health costs.
About $900 million in health care costs in Kansas can be attributed to problems caused by smoking each year, said Mary Jayne Hellebust, executive director of the tobacco-control coalition.
“Every percentage point drop in the rate of smoking results in 20,000 fewer smokers,” she said. “To that extent, there literally is savings in lives and in health costs.”
Health advocates say Kansas should spend more on its anti-smoking campaign, especially since the state stands to receive an extra $15.5 million next year in 2007 from the national settlement with the big tobacco companies.
The so-called Master Settlement Agreement, or MSA, of November 1998 was reached by states and the tobacco industry to settle the lawsuit filed by states seeking reimbursement for the costs of treating sick smokers. As its portion of the settlement payments, Kansas has since received about $400 million. Kansas has received approximately $50 million in settlement payments each of the past two years. The additional $15.5 million for the fiscal year that begins July 1 would come from an increase in base payments from the tobacco companies to the states, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
The majority of the settlement money has gone to the
Children”s Initiative Fund (.pdf)
, which pays for a variety of child welfare programs in the Juvenile Justice Authority; Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services and the Department of Education.
The legislature has allocated about $1 million each year from the Children”s Initiative Fund for local tobacco control programs. But if additional funds are coming to Kansas, the Tobacco Free Kansas Coalition wants it used for science-based, comprehensive tobacco prevention and cessation programs in communities throughout the state.
That fits the original intent of the tobacco settlement funds, Hellebust said.
Other initiatives endorsed by the coalition are clean indoor air laws, both statewide and at the local level; significantly increased tobacco taxes; and a comprehensive cancer plan that includes tobacco-use prevention and cessation.