1. In your opinion, what key decisions need to be made about the tobacco settlement funds?
Allina
Criteria for fund allocation: The current settlement allocates funds for tobacco control, cessation and prevention to be "governed" by a non-partisan board. Hopefully the board will use evidence-based criteria so that the allocations rise above the political arena.
Funding healthcare: The legislature will disperse a large amount of the settlement money and a key decision will be whether or not to use the funds for health and health-care:
It would be a tragedy if the settlement funds were dispersed for tax rebates, road construction, etc. and had no impact on the health of Minnesota.
American Cancer Society
Is the public health community going to be united in its request for the use of the tobacco settlement funds? Who will represent the public health community? What strategies and tactics must be used to make our request a success? How much money will be allocated to tobacco control and prevention programs? What will our request look like? Once the funds are allocated, how do we determine how the funds will be administered? How do we assure that any funds that are earmarked stay earmarked for tobacco control? We need to assure that the new nonprofit public health entity, not the legislature, has the freedom to allocate funds for specific tobacco control projects (e.g., public awareness campaigns, policy activities, etc.).
Attorney General's Office
Minnesotans have a once-in-a-century chance to end the epidemic of tobacco use and leave our children a legacy of better health and longer life. I will urge the Legislature to commit 11 percent of the settlement, or $650 million, to fund a 25-year effort to eradicate this deadly addiction.
To insulate it from the influence of Big Tobacco, I am proposing that this funding be entrusted to a new nonprofit, the Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco (MPAAT), run by directors and advisory committees with expertise and a proven commitment to tobacco control. America's most respected tobacco control advocates, Doctors C. Everett Koop and David Kessler, have agreed to help get the Partnership off to the best possible start.
Department of Health
The first decision to be made is to allocate funds to tobacco prevention. In Minnesota, health-related costs due to smoking amount to more than $1 billion per year. To reduce this burden, we must prevent young people from starting to smoke, increase the number of smokers who quit, and reduce exposure to secondhand smoke. It is crucial that we commit sufficient funds for a long-term, multi-faceted plan. Such a comprehensive plan must be science-based and should be coordinated across all sectors of the community. If Minnesota commits to such a plan, the settlement dollars could provide an excellent way to pay for it.
Department of Children, Families and Learning
BlueCross BlueShield
Minnesotans must be assured that an adequate portion of the proceeds is dedicated to tobacco cessation and prevention. The difficulty will come in determining what is an adequate amount. Another important decision is how to administer these funds. What will the procedure be and who will have the decision-making authority and accountability² Also, decisions need to be made concerning how remaining funds-those funds not used to reduce tobacco use-should be spent. Should those funds be dedicated to health or used more broadly² BlueCross strongly advocates that the funds be used for health-related purposes.
HealthPartners
The key decisions about the tobacco settlement funds boil down to how much will actually go into tobacco control and who will make the decisions about spending the money. The court must decide whether the foundation proposed by the Attorney General is acceptable. Then a way must be found to ensure that knowledgeable people decide how to spend the foundation's money. Finally, the legislature must determine how to spend the portion of the settlement money that falls within its purview. Only that body can resist temptations not to dedicate a substantial amount of it to tobacco control and allocate a substantial portion of it to programs that supplement research and cessation.
Smoke-Free Coalition/Assn. for Nonsmokers
Nothing engages the enthusiasm and creativity of a state legislator more than the arrival of a bag of money on his or her doorstep. A bag of settlement money will be on the doorstep this session and legislators will decide how to spend it. Only three percent of the total tobacco settlement funds have been earmarked to reduce tobacco use. It will be up to the Minnesota Legislature to decide how much of the balance of the settlement funds to invest in programs that will drastically reduce tobacco use. The wisest investment the state can make in its future is to create a program using $650 million, just 11 percent of the total settlement, to put in place a permanent tobacco control program that builds on successful programs in other states. Minnesota has an incredible opportunity before it, an opportunity to invest dollars from the tobacco settlement to reduce the costs of tobacco addiction for all Minnesotans.
Local Public Health Association
First, the various interest groups and organizations must build strong agreement that funding for a comprehensive tobacco control strategy is a top priority and that the legislature should appropriate sufficient funds to ensure a stable long-term revenue source for tobacco control efforts. The proposal under consideration is that the legislature appropriate approximately $650 million over the next several years to an endowment that would generate $60 to $80 million per year.
Second, we need to build agreement on a governance structure for administering the funds appropriated by the legislature. We would support a governance structure that achieves the following goals:
Third, we need to build consensus on a comprehensive tobacco control strategy. We support utilizing the existing community health services infrastructure to coordinate community-based efforts.
Beyond developing a tobacco control strategy, we need to develop some agreement that tobacco settlement funds should be used to support other priorities of the state/local public health system as well as enhance coverage for smoking cessation and treatment.