Learn it! Speak it! Live it!
Bring Christmas to a child in need!
An 'urgency': Sensing threats to institutions of society, church leaders make declaration 
Click to Print
Include Comments
Up in smoke
An Ohio anti-smoking group has gone up in smoke after the majority of its endowment was redirected for an economic-development package “intended to create jobs rather than nonsmokers.”
Most of the [Ohio Tobacco Prevention Foundation] employees and programs were absorbed into the Ohio Department of Health under an arrangement scheduled to end June 30. After that, foundation programs such as Stand Ohio, an advertising and peer-pressure campaign aimed at youth, and a toll-free quit line, are likely to disappear.
Late Tuesday, Gov. Ted Strickland signed a bill to abolish the foundation and divert $230 million of its $270 million endowment. The remaining $40 million goes to the Department of Health to keep some of the anti-smoking programs going, at least temporarily.
However, the anti-smoking group American Legacy Foundation (ALF) is attempting to prevent the state from raiding the endowment, which “was created from Ohio’s share of the 1998 legal settlement between 46 states and the country’s major cigarette companies.” The ALF said the state’s action is a breach of agreement between the ALF and the Ohio Tobacco Prevention Foundation board, which on April 4 voted to turn over $190 million to the ALF to protect it from Strickland and other legislators.
“We contend that the money was designated for tobacco prevention and control,” said Ellen Vargyas, the ALF’s general counsel. “That’s how the money must be spent. This is money that the state has in the first place because of the suffering and deaths of its citizens from tobacco-related disease.”
Thoughts?
back to top11 Comments to “Up in smoke”
This is typical of bureacracies. Money earmarked for one thing gets absconded with and used for someone else’ pet project because they have more power….
Witness the Katrina disaster and corrupt politicians who didn’t give a rip about protecting the citizens…
Report comment to moderator
Elected officials are famous for their bait and switch. The most famous being stealing the Social Security trust fund ans spending it on something else, stealing the excess of Medicaid and spending it on something else and stealing the gasoline taxes to spend on other things than road maintenance and building.
The last time they raised the taxes on smokes they used the money to provide health care for illegal alien children rather than to pay for the added health care of smokers.
Elected officials especially hate Smokers. They stole the tobacco settlement money where they extorted money, through the courts, from tobacco companies and where supposed to use the monies for stop smoking campaigns and to pay health care of smokers etc. This is how they got the got the money. Once they have it then they steal it and spend it on stuff you don’t want or need.
It is like the left’s idea to provide health care for those 47 million that do not have insurance in America. What they do not tell you is that in the 47 million – 20 million are illegal aliens.
It seems the goal of elected officials is to steal money from anyone they can, hoping we will not find out so they can spend it on anything except what they said it was to be spent for and on what we do not want – like their higher salaries, private retirement and health care plans. You know the private plans I am talking about. The same ones that are too horrible for us to have.
Yeah, we aren’t good enough to have what they give themselves but we are stupid enough to pay for them to have the best. How? They pay for their privatized stuff first and on time by stealing the money from the really horrible socialistic plans we have but they bankrupted – to pay for theirs.
Like idiots, we keep electing these criminals so we deserve to have nothing to show for our hard work – except that illegal aliens will have health care even if we do not. We should just shoot ourselves in the head instead and make it easy for them steal from us. Then they won’t have to leave us for dead – like they plan to do when we are all broke.
Well, truth be known – we really don’t deserve suicide.
Report comment to moderator
Ho-hum. Nothing new here. Pass on to the next thread, folks.
Why not just make tobacco illegal? To simple a solution and too hard to enforce, I suppose.
Report comment to moderator
Why dont we vote huge subsidies to tobacco growers while at the same time buying up ads and PSAs on radio discouraging smoking.
Oh wait, we do that already.
Report comment to moderator
The tobacco litigation was just a ‘make rich’ toss to the trial lawyers (big political contributors). The settlement was just extortion from tobacco companies.
The government – through the settlement and tax stamps for sales – is essentially just a shareholder in Big Tobacco.
If we don’t want to be used, we shouldn’t subsidize its growth.
Report comment to moderator
Sawgunner #4, don’t be too quick to see the subsidies and anti-smoking ads as two different sides of the same coin.
Not all tobacco goes for smoking. Some of it goes for . . .
Well, anyway, I’m sure not all of it goes for smoking. Positive. Got to be that way. Otherwise, the government actions would be psychotic or worse.
Report comment to moderator
SteveAubrey – Some of it goes for chewing (but that is as bad or worse for the one consuming the tobacco).
Report comment to moderator
Another example of anti Americans stealing the profits from a perfectly legal group of companies, and then (the original intent) was to put these tobacco companies out of business with ads using their own money to do so. But the politicians stole this money and you will never see it again or know what is being used for – but you can guess that it won’t be something you like.
What is fair decent and honest, as well as, not being Anti American would be to make smoking illegal and thus profits from it would be illegal. But you would have to do the same thing for fast food companies and companies dealing in alcohol too or it would no longer be fair decent and honest.
Any one of the 7 deadly sins would be problematic.
Report comment to moderator
Llama – Lust (among the 7 deadly sins) would not be problematic because they’ve made that a constitutionally protected activity.
Report comment to moderator
Peter L — “Why not just make tobacco illegal? To simple a solution and too hard to enforce, I suppose.”
Government will never kill one of its’ largest cash cows like the tobacco tax by making illegal the product that generates all that revenue—and for which government must do nothing except rake in the bucks.
The well known nanny state proponents will whine, complain, rail and legislate against the tobacco companies and their filthy, deadly products while at the same time happily taking the tax money from tobacco addicted citizens that they claim they want to protect from big tobacco and whose health they want to improve. They actually want neither because if these same people should stop smoking, the revenue stream allowing for their pet projects and social engineering experiments would disappear.
It’s one of the greatest hypocrisies of all hypocrisies.
Report comment to moderator
I do recall Hillary’s 92 health care nationalization attempt. It would have been funded purely by cigarette taxes. At that very time the govt was spending money on all manner of smoking cessation efforts. So if our health care was going to be financed by a tax on smoking, would it not have made much more sense to push smoking on the entire population?
The ChiComms are all for the most part cig puffers. I guess cancer and the forced abortions are their two big tools for achieving population cap goals.
Report comment to moderator
back to topJoin The Conversation
You need to be a registered user of WORLDonTheWeb.com to "join the conversation."
If you are not a member yet, what are you waiting for? Register / Login Now!