U.S. Surgeon General Patrick O?Carroll: Youth smoking is re-emerging as a concern in Washington state

[Emily]

The kids are still smoking, and we're not doing much about it

By Keith Seinfeld
Thu June 14, 2012
Youth smoking is re-emerging as a concern in Washington. The US Surgeon General came to Seattle this week to give a pep talk to anti-smoking campaigners, who are coping with three years of drastic budget cuts.

If it seems like smoking is already on a perpetual decline, that's a mis-perception, said assistant Surgeon General Patrick O?Carroll, in an interview...

A Broken Promise to Our Children
The 1998 State Tobacco Settlement 13 Years Later

Since the November 1998 multi-state tobacco settlement, we have issued annual reports assessing whether the states are keeping their promise to use a significant portion of their settlement funds ? estimated at $246 billion over the first 25 years ? to attack the enormous public health problems posed by tobacco use in the United States.

Our latest report, issued November 30, 2011, finds that the states have cut funding for tobacco prevention and cessation programs to the lowest level since 1999, when they first received tobacco settlement funds....

Tobacco settlement Gregoire negotiated not popular with all

Monday, October 04, 2004 - Page updated at 12:00 A.M.


By Andrew Garber
Seattle Times staff reporter
[snip]
Critics, including some prominent public-health experts, say the agreement insulated tobacco companies from potentially crippling lawsuits and made the states dependent on money from cigarettes.

"The settlement agreement has been the absolute worst thing that has ever happened in tobacco control," says Michael Siegel, a physician and associate professor at the Boston University School of Public Health. "Essentially what [Gregoire] did was sign a tobacco-interest bailout." ...