For people that think that government is the solution to the problems in our healthcare system, just consider the outcome of the tobacco settlement of a decade ago.

In November 1998, 46 states settled their lawsuits against the major tobacco companies to recover tobacco-related healthcare costs. At the time, four states had already settled their lawsuits with big tobacco.

The final 1998 tobacco settlement required the tobacco companies to make annual payments to the states in perpetuity, with total payments estimated at $246 billion over the first 25 years.

The agreement had clear language stating that the states would spend a significant portion of the funds to prevent and reduce tobacco use, especially among children, and to treat smoking-caused illness.

Unfortunately, ten years later, various studies have found that most states have failed to keep their promise to spend a significant portion of the settlement funds on programs to protect kids from tobacco addiction and help smokers quit.

The most recent study which includes the American Medical Association among its members, found that with hundreds of billions of dollars available each year from settlement money and tobacco tax revenue, every state has broken its initial promise to spend tobacco settlement money on smoking cessation and prevention.

In fact, the states don't even come close to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-recommended levels of spending, which would be merely 15% of that money. In the 10 years since the landmark deal, the states have received $79.2 billion of the settlement and another $124.3 billion from tobacco taxes, but have spent only about 3 percent on tobacco prevention and cessation programs.

Sadly, reports indicate that not one state is currently funding tobacco prevention programs at the levels recommended by the U.S. Government's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and only nine are funding such efforts at even half the recommended level.

The truth is that the already dismal record of government spending to prevent smoking is about to get even worse. The current economic recession has state budgets in crisis and states will raid tobacco money to fill budget holes, as was the case during the last economic downturn between 2002 and 2005 when smoking-related spending was cut 28%.

American states have become addicted to increasing tobacco revenue without incurring the expense of educating children about the dangers of smoking . Since the tobacco settlement, 44 states and the District of Columbia have raised cigarette tax rates 90 times, increasing the average state cigarette tax from 39 cents to $1.19 per pack today. In addition, the federal government has just increased its own tobacco revenue addiction, raising its federal excise tax from 39 cents to $1.01 per pack.

The result of all the increasing taxes on tobacco is destined to become a replay of Prohibition-era alcohol social decay. With tobacco becoming increasingly expensive to obtain, law-abiding citizens will break the law routinely, and states will respond by adopting costly and intrusive tactics to catch them.

Organized criminals have already begun trafficking in smuggled cigarettes, and states will spend prodigiously to catch them, with little success. Money spent on tobacco criminal law enforcement instead of educating children on the dangers of tobacco has become the dubious outcome of that tobacco settlement windfall for the states ten years ago.

So, the growth of these destructive consequences are the eventual costs that the states will have to pay now that the political smoke of saving children from cigarettes has faded away.

http://www.eworldvu.com