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Excerpts from Students put heat on lawmakers over tobacco issue

By ERICA CURLESS, Billings Gazette [01/28/99]

Students put lawmakers on the hot seat Wednesday, video-taping their opinions on how to spend the $832 million tobacco settlement.

Roaming the Capitol's halls with cameras and microphones, students from across Montana cornered legislators about how to divvy up the cash the state may receive over the next 27 years. Montana and 45 other states sued seven tobacco companies over health damages caused by tobacco use over the years. It's unclear when Montana will receive its first payment.

Helena High School junior Sarah Tobin asked about using the tobacco settlement cash for tax relief or other non-health proposals such as a dinosaur museum in Fort Peck.

More than 20 students participated in the program sponsored by Voice Against Tobacco, the Center for Adolescent Development and KRTV in Great Falls. The teenagers will take the videos back to their classrooms and share the lawmakers' opinions.

Nancy Davis-Walker of Great Falls, Voice Against Tobacco director and vocal cord cancer survivor, said bringing teenagers to the Legislature will raise lawmakers' awareness about tobacco problems in Montana.

Davis-Walker and Bill Devine, Center for Adolescent Development director, want the state to use a portion of the tobacco settlement to fund their programs, which provide schools with tobacco-prevention curriculum and encourage high school kids to work with grade-school students about tobacco's devastating health and social effects.

Lawmakers and other state officials such as Attorney General Joe Mazurek weren't the only ones with opinions on how to use the tobacco settlement funds. Many of the students had their own ideas.

Montana's children, not state lawmakers and other adults, should reap the benefits from the $832 million settlement, Tobin said.

"It will affect my generation more than theirs and they need to take that into consideration," she said. "We need prevention education. If we use it all for medical purposes now, in 20 years when we run out of money, we'll still have the same problem."

But Tobin and other students learned that not everyone supports funding tobacco-prevention education.

"I don't think any of you need to be educated about the dangers of tobacco use," Orr told the students. "I don't think that's a good use of money. We don't need to do any education."

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