• 21st Century Issues •
Spend the money on what the fight was about: no smoking
BY JANE STOEVER
La Jolla, Calif
Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore:
"Guess what? You guys are all we have."
States are playing havoc with the $246 billion from the tobacco settlement.
"We agreed the states should keep all the tobacco settlement money as long as they improved public health and kept kids from getting addicted," Mississippi Attorney General Michael Moore said at the AAFP State Legislative Conference Nov. 14 in La Jolla. He sought and fought for the 46-state compromise.
"If a state gets $1 billion, how does spending half of that on a highway reduce smoking?" asked Moore. "One state's building a morgue -- I guess they could call it the Philip Morris Memorial Morgue."
Moore warned that the U.S. Congress might intercept the flow of dollars to the states if they keep siphoning the money toward construction and tax cuts.
In 1994, when Moore filed the first state lawsuit against tobacco companies, he thought people would run to his defense. Wrong. His mother hated it, and his governor sued him. "Who stood by me?" he asked. "Doctors."
And now, many attorneys general who pressed for the settlement are out of office. "Guess what? You guys are all we have," he told about 125 family physicians, chapter executives and lobbyists.
"When you testify, make it real. Talk about arteriosclerosis and amputation. But also make it dollars and cents," said Moore. "Say, 'Here's the payoff in 10 years if we can stop 20 to 30 percent of kids in our state from smoking.' And get real kids to help you, the ones with blue hair and tattoos and pierced noses. They're the ones most likely to smoke, not the class presidents."
Moore urged family physicians to protect the settlement money by establishing nonprofit corporations in their states to dispense it.
He added, "You've got a huge fight ahead of you. Do it as family doctors. You deal with kids. People will listen to you."
FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department.
Copyright © 2000 by American Academy of Family Physicians.
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