A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization
Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions
| Home | Search | About ASH | Why Join | Comment | Email page |
|
Action on Smoking and Health
A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions
|
Health Officials Urge Tobacco Firms to Continue Payments to Anti-Smoking Campaign [03/16-6]
Excerpts from:
U.S. Tobacco Firms Reject Calls for No-Smoking Drive
By
Maggie Fox
Reuters [03/16/04]
Nearly two dozen former U.S. health officials teamed up on Tuesday to demand that major cigarette companies keep paying for a campaign designed to prevent children from smoking.
But the companies rejected the appeal and launched their own attacks against states for diverting tobacco-firm money intended for use in no-smoking efforts under a 1998 legal settlement.
By failing to continue funding this campaign, the tobacco companies condemn millions of children to premature death and disability," Joseph Califano, who was secretary of health, education and welfare from 1977 to 1979, told a news conference by the group of former health officials.
Because they have lost market share, the tobacco companies are no longer obligated to contribute $300 million a year to a campaign against teen and child smoking, known as "truth," which was established under terms of a 1998 settlement to lawsuits by 46 states.
Companies made their last payment this year to the fund. But the bipartisan group, which includes all living former secretaries of health, all former surgeons general, and all former directors of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, asked that the contributions continue.
The organization is called the Citizens' Commission to Protect the Truth. It has set up a Web site at www.protectthetruth.org to try to collect 1 million signatures to persuade the tobacco companies to keep funding the effort.
Under the 1998 settlement, the four major tobacco companies agreed to pay $206 billion over 25 years to compensate governments for the cost of caring for sick smokers.
They also agreed to spend $300 million a year to fund what became the anti-smoking campaign, but only as long as they controlled 99.05 percent of the cigarette market.
That market share has shrunk due to higher retail cigarette prices.
Califano said the campaign has worked.
"In the two years following the launch of "truth," cigarette smoking among high school students fell from 28 percent to 22.9 percent -- a drop of more than one million smokers," he said.
Organizers of the effort to save the anti-smoking campaign acknowledged that cash-strapped state governments have been using money from the agreement to shore up their tattered budgets and to fund programs from education to health care.
| Home Web Page | Search This Site | Learn About ASH | Why Join ASH | Comment on This | Email This Page |