Spending the Tobacco Settlement Money.

• Position: Brief Article

The 50 states have appropriated $21.3 billion in tobacco settlement revenue over the past three years. Legislatures established commissions, conducted statewide meetings and held public appropriation hearings to reach their decisions on how to spend the money.

Nearly 46 percent of the tobacco funds have been earmarked for health care, including tobacco-use prevention, Medicaid, children's health insurance programs, primary care, pharmaceutical: assistance to the elderly, home- and community-based care, and biomedical research.

Forty states allocated nearly $1.1 billion for tobacco-use prevention and control. This represents "new" money. Before receiving settlement funds states depended on federal grants and cigarette excise taxes for these prevention programs.

Looking to the future and wishing to leave a legacy, lawmakers appropriated $5.6 billion to establish endowments or budget reserves. More than 75 percent of this amount is for health care. The money earned from the endowments will fund these programs in perpetuity.

To order NCSL's report on how states are spending tobacco settlement funds call Mary Ellen Harvey in the Washington, D.C., office, (202)...