Group Discusses How To Spend Anti-Tobacco Money

Source from:  September 24, 2007 wpbf.com TALLAHASSEE, Fla. 09/25/2007

A special group began meeting Monday to discuss how Florida can best spend more than $50 million on an anti-tobacco campaign. Lawmakers had gutted the program's budget in recent years. But last year voters changed the constitution to require the Legislature to put 15 percent of the state's tobacco settlement dollars into the program each year. That comes to just under $58 million this year. In the late 1990s Florida's effort to convince kids that smoking wasn't cool was widely praised. The number of kids who said in surveys that they smoke dropped off fairly dramatically during the time the program was in full swing. Later, when the program was no longer being used, the decreases leveled off. A special advisory council created by the Legislature this year to provide input on how the state can spend the money most effectively. Enditem