Tobacco Free Kids Releases Annual Tobacco Prevention Funding Report

The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, along with a handful of other partner organizations, released this week Broken Promises to Our Children: A State-by-State Look at the 1998 Tobacco Settlement 19 Years Later. The report examines the expenditure of tobacco settlement funds and taxes and finds that many states are significantly underfunding tobacco prevention and cessation programs. Throughout the country this fiscal year, states will collect $27.5 billion from tobacco settlement and taxes; however, less than three percent of these funds—$721.6 million—are spent on tobacco-related programs.

However, according to the report, California’s recent efforts in tobacco prevention and cessation have made the state an exception. When ranked by percent of CDC-recommended funding levels, California is ranked first in the country, spending 94.2 percent of the CDC’s recommendation ($327.8 million).

California alone accounts for 45 percent of total state spending on tobacco prevention and cessation programs throughout the country, largely due to Proposition 56 which raised the state’s tobacco tax by $2.00. The revenue from Proposition 56 is by far the most any state has spent on tobacco prevention and cessation programs, and California increased its previous year’s tobacco prevention and cessation expenditures by more than $252 million.

More information and an overview of the report are available here. The full report is available here.