• 12/2/2004
  • St. Louis
  • Carolyn Bower
  • STLToday.cm

Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon said Tuesday that state legislators should use about $7 million in new tobacco settlement money to pay for a program to stop young people from smoking and using tobacco.

Missouri lacks a significant youth smoking prevention program even though the state has received more than $822 million in tobacco settlement money so far, Nixon told sixth-graders at Pattonville’s Holman Middle School in St. Ann. Instead, the money went to the general fund to help balance the state’s budget. “Not one dollar of that $822 million has been spent to keep young people in Missouri from smoking,” he said.

Three of every 10 Missouri high school students smoke, one of the highest rates in the country, Nixon said. In fact, the percentage of Missouri high school students who smoke – 30.3 percent – surpasses the percentage of Missouri adults who smoke – 26.6 percent, he said.

Nixon said nearly 40 tobacco companies recently signed on to the settlement agreement reached in 1998 between tobacco manufacturers and 46 states. The decision will bring about $7 million in new money to Missouri each year, he said.

“This should be earmarked to stop our children from picking up the smoking habit,” Nixon said. “We have seen the success of other states in efforts to reduce smoking rates. We have the resources. But do we have the will? It’s up to the legislators to take the next step.”

Nixon said he was working with legislators to get a bill introduced that would address youth smoking. Nixon would like to see a commission formed that includes representatives of lung and cancer associations as well as the medical community and students. He said that group should decide how to spend the new tobacco money.

Joining Nixon in speaking to the Pattonville pupils were representatives of the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association and the American Lung Association of Missouri.

Representing the cancer society, Don Young told students that having the facts about the health effects of smoking might have kept him from starting to smoke at age 14. Young, who speaks with a special machine held to his neck, told students that he smoked for 34 years and had developed throat cancer.

Tobacco use contributes to more than 430,000 deaths a year, said Dr. Soraya Nouri, a professor of pediatrics at Washington University and professor emeritus at St. Louis University. Dr. Nouri spoke on behalf of the heart association. She said that among Missouri teens who now smoke, 144,000 can be expected to die of smoking-related diseases.

Dr. Nouri said a person who smokes will require $12,000 more each year than the average person in health care.

Kassy Tripp, 11, one of the Holman students, said she had read that students are smoking at younger and younger ages. She said she liked Nixon’s plan.

“It’s a good idea,” said Kassy. “It’s smart.”