Summary: The U.S. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that Texas spend
$266.3 million a year to have an effective, comprehensive tobacco
prevention program. Texas currently allocates $5.5 million a
year for tobacco prevention and cessation. This is 2.0% of the
CDC’s recommendation and ranks Texas 39th among the states in the
funding of tobacco prevention programs. Texas’s spending on
tobacco prevention amounts to 0.3% of the estimated $1.9 billion in
tobacco-generated revenue the state collects each year from
settlement payments and tobacco taxes.
Recent Developments: A 1999 law
requires that all tobacco settlement payments be placed into several
permanent endowments earmarked for a range of health and education
programs. As Texas receives new funds as part of its settlement with
the tobacco industry, the money is appropriated by the legislature
on a biennial basis.
Texas is spending minimal amounts on tobacco
prevention even though the state is receiving more tobacco-generated
revenue than ever before as a result of a $1.00 cigarette tax
increase in 2007, which brought Texas’s cigarette tax to $1.41
a pack.
The biannual state budget for FY2012 and FY2013
appropriated $10.9 million from the tobacco settlement to tobacco
prevention, which is approximately $5.5 million per year. This is
half of what was spent on prevention in FY2010 and FY2011.
In addition, Texas is receiving $3.1 million in
federal funds dedicated to tobacco prevention and control:
-
$1.9 million from the U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention in a 12-month grant for the period
beginning April 2011 (from annual appropriations).
-
$251,470 from the Prevention and Public Health
Fund in the new health care reform law.
-
$1,024,050 from the Food and Drug
Administration for enforcement of the Family Smoking Prevention
and Tobacco Control Act, including the provision regarding
tobacco sales to minors.
