No-smoking drive thriving — in U.S., anyway

Let me just say off the top that I think smoking is a vile habit. It's shameful how cigarette manufacturers hooked generations of Americans on the death sticks, among them military veterans who were given cigarettes in their C-rations, long before disclosing the dangers and addictive nature of tobacco.

So it didn't trouble me too much when Big Tobacco had to hand over billions of dollars to 46 states under the master settlement agreement. Utah is one of those states. To date, the state has received about $230 million.

Utah has placed nearly $32 million into the state's tobacco trust fund, from which only interest earnings may be spent. The rest has gone into ongoing programs. In early 2000 and in the face of a sluggish economy, lawmakers dipped into this trust fund to balance the state budget.

As for ongoing programs, a portion of the settlement funds has been spent each year on the Children's Health Insurance Program, drug courts, tobacco prevention programs, the Huntsman Cancer Institute and the Attorney General's Office. None of those uses gives me heartburn, but I get a little nervous when the state funds ongoing programs with one-time money. It could be argued, I suppose, that the state is to receive this funding for 25 years. That's about as "ongoing" as most of us can comprehend. The well will go dry at some point, though. How does the state fund those programs then?

Tobacco settlement funds have troubled me on another level. The settlement payments depend on people continuing to smoke. Perhaps all of those anti-tobacco ads will discourage American children from taking up the habit. As tobacco has become increasingly unacceptable in the United States, Big Tobacco has exploited international markets. In spite of the MSA, the cigarette business is booming. Someone's got to foot the MSA, after all.

We have a strange relationship with tobacco, don't we? It's been banned in public buildings, airliners, restaurants and now in some public outdoor gathering places. Despite those sensibilities, movie stars and starlets still light up on the big screen, even as we know the health risks of smoking.

But that may change, too. The Motion Picture Association of America has announced that films that glamorize smoking may receive more restrictive movie ratings, which means audience members under 17 would be shut out from such movies.

That's probably a move in the right direction, but I'm not wholly convinced that young people take up the habit because their favorite actor or actress lights up in a movie. I think it has more to do with parental expectations, access to tobacco and self-esteem.