{"id":204,"date":"2010-12-23T11:38:12","date_gmt":"2010-12-23T18:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theloungeisback.wordpress.com\/?p=204"},"modified":"2010-12-23T11:38:12","modified_gmt":"2010-12-23T18:38:12","slug":"ohio-can-grab-tobacco-funds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=204","title":{"rendered":"Ohio can grab tobacco funds"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ohio Supreme Court<\/a> ruled this week that the State Legislature does have the power to raid $250 million of the state’s tobacco funds. This is money from the 1998 $280 billion Tobacco Settlement Agreement between the states and Big Tobacco.<\/p>\n

Several states have used these monies simply to balance their budgets. The states won the settlement initially because of the costs of smoking on state’s Medicaid programs. But, instead of using that money for anti-smoking education or health care, most states have simply thrown the money into their general fund pots so they can avoid raising property taxes. There’s nothing in the agreement that prevents states from doing this. And no one expected it or saw it coming. It was one of the most heartbreaking aspects of the 1998 settlement. So much more could have been accomplished with that money, but politicians wanted to be able to spend more money without raising taxes and it turned into an easy little windfall for a number of states.<\/p>\n

So, Ohio actually set up a quasi-nonprofit quasi-public agency to run its anti-tobacco program. A couple of years ago, Gov Ted Strickland decided to raid the agency’s funds, and the agency fought back. The American Legacy Fund (a national anti-smoking organization) sued, saying the $10 billion Ohio received from the 1998 settlement was a trust that the state couldn’t simply raid.<\/p>\n

After two years of the case winding through the courts (At one point a court ruled in favour of the anti-tobacco plaintiffs and against the state), the state Supreme Court ruled that what Strickland did was legal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled this week that the State Legislature does have the power to raid $250 million of the state’s tobacco funds. This is money from the 1998 $280 billion Tobacco Settlement Agreement between the states and Big Tobacco. Several states have used these monies simply to balance their budgets. The states won … Continue reading Ohio can grab tobacco funds<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,69],"tags":[606,191],"class_list":["post-204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anti-tobacco-campaign","category-tobacco-2","tag-ohio","tag-tobacco"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hpEa-3i","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2630,"url":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=2630","url_meta":{"origin":204,"position":0},"title":"Mr. Butts makes a return to Doonesbury","author":"Pepe Lepew","date":"November 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"I would still like to do a longer piece sometime on Mr. Butts, the great anti-tobacco character that Garry Trudeau invented 20 or 30 years ago in Doonesbury. Trudeau brought Mr. Butts out of the closet Sunday for a great cartoon on the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement. One of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "1998 Master Settlement Agreement"","block_context":{"text":"1998 Master Settlement Agreement","link":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?cat=315"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Mr-Butts.jpg?fit=865%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Mr-Butts.jpg?fit=865%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Mr-Butts.jpg?fit=865%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Mr-Butts.jpg?fit=865%2C1200&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":495,"url":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=495","url_meta":{"origin":204,"position":1},"title":"How Big Tobacco got away with the Crime of the Century","author":"Pepe Lepew","date":"March 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"It all began in 1994. Years of outrage over decades of Big Tobacco's lies finally seemed to be coming to fruition. 1994 was the year it seemed like we finally turned a corner in the fight against Big Tobacco. The early 90s was pretty much the height of the lung\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Tobacco"","block_context":{"text":"Big Tobacco","link":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?cat=10"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/joe_camel.jpg?fit=432%2C604&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":291,"url":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=291","url_meta":{"origin":204,"position":2},"title":"American Lung Association: You all FAIL!!!","author":"Pepe Lepew","date":"January 24, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"And you! And you! And you, too! And you, three!! The American Lung Association came out with its annual \"State of Tobacco Control\" report this week, and not surprisingly, pretty much every state got failing grades. In fact, Montana was only one of five states in the entire nation that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Lung Association"","block_context":{"text":"American Lung Association","link":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?cat=6"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/theloungeisback.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/01\/reactsummit08groupphoto.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":769,"url":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=769","url_meta":{"origin":204,"position":3},"title":"Oregon Supreme Court came, saw, then kicks Philip Morris’ ASS","author":"Pepe Lepew","date":"December 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Philip Morris got its ass handed to it by the Oregon Supreme Court, which shockingly (to me, because the good guys rarely win these cases, at least completely win) upheld a jury award to the widow of a smoker killed by lung cancer. The Supreme Court ruled that Philip Morris\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Tobacco"","block_context":{"text":"Big Tobacco","link":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?cat=10"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/oregonian.jpg?fit=380%2C250&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3636,"url":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=3636","url_meta":{"origin":204,"position":4},"title":"Think Progress: The gun industry watched what happened to the tobacco industry and took notice","author":"Pepe Lepew","date":"December 2, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"A very compelling read from Think Progress about how the\u00a0gun industry watched regulators and the legal justice system cratered Big Tobacco, prompting the gun industry to take steps to make sure the same thing couldn't happen to it. Big Tobacco, while still vastly wealthy, is not nearly the\u00a0political powerhouse\u00a0that it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Tobacco"","block_context":{"text":"Big Tobacco","link":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?cat=10"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/guns_and_cigarettes_by_model850-d3ayai3.jpg?fit=1200%2C720&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/guns_and_cigarettes_by_model850-d3ayai3.jpg?fit=1200%2C720&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/guns_and_cigarettes_by_model850-d3ayai3.jpg?fit=1200%2C720&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/guns_and_cigarettes_by_model850-d3ayai3.jpg?fit=1200%2C720&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/guns_and_cigarettes_by_model850-d3ayai3.jpg?fit=1200%2C720&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2293,"url":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?p=2293","url_meta":{"origin":204,"position":5},"title":"Good news everyone, teen smoking rate drops to lowest point in 22 years","author":"Pepe Lepew","date":"June 13, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Good news. According to new figure from the Centers for Disease Control, the smoking rate for teens has dropped to 15.7 percent, the lowest\u00a0in 22 years that the National Youth Risk Surveys have been tracking the smoking rate. The high point (or low point depending upon your perspective) of teen\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "1998 Master Settlement Agreement"","block_context":{"text":"1998 Master Settlement Agreement","link":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/?cat=315"},"img":{"alt_text":"good news","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/good-news.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pepesnonsmokingpartytimelounge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}