Friday, Jun. 27, 2008

Put grant program to good use: Fund anti-smoking effort

HERE WE GO again. Money’s tight, so one of the first things that takes a hit is the state’s embarrassingly underfunded smoking prevention and cessation program.

Actually, money doesn’t have to be tight for the Legislature to short the $2 million program, which provides free anti-smoking counseling, nicotine gum and patches to people who want to quit, and helps fund a youth-run anti-smoking group that converts teens to the cause. Funding has been cut even when the state budget was flush.

But lawmakers say that this year’s economic slowdown left them with no option but to eliminate the anti-smoking funding, and besides, there’s nothing they can do about it anyhow, since the Legislature has adjourned for the year. Neither is true.

The first claim implies that every program in the $7 billion state budget was more important than a program that has helped reduce teen smoking from 36 percent to 19 percent since we first started occasionally putting some money into it in 1999. That includes such items as the lieutenant governor’s driver, security for the Hunley submarine, a new university real estate program, a local arts program and, of course, $18.5 million that’s sitting in the Legislature’s special little slush fund ironically dubbed the “Competitive Grants Program.” (Funding these anti-smoking programs wouldn’t be so critical if lawmakers had managed to override Gov. Mark Sanford’s veto of the most effective anti-smoking initiative — a higher cigarette tax that prices kids out of the market — but that’s another editorial.)

To understand how legislators can restore funding for the anti-smoking efforts, we turn to that Competitive Grants Program. It’s best known for bankrolling parades and festivals, local government programs and non-profit groups with close ties to legislators, but there’s nothing in the law that prohibits it from providing money for worthy efforts that would benefit our entire state. Indeed, one of the three areas it’s supposed to concentrate on is “health and environmental” — and there aren’t a lot of things that will do more to improve the public health and the environment than reducing smoking.

The board that awards those grants is scheduled to meet this morning to dole out more money. And while the board members don’t answer to the public, they’re appointed by five people who do: Senate Finance Chairman Hugh Leatherman, House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Cooper, Gov. Mark Sanford, Comptroller General Richard Eckstrom and Treasurer Converse Chellis. Those officials should make it clear to their appointees that they want the first $2 million awarded today to go to the state’s smoking quit line and the youth anti-smoking program Rage Against the Haze.

If it’s too late to get the paperwork in order before the meeting, then the board should postpone its decisions, or else leave some of the money unallocated. That would give time for all legislators who care about reducing smoking — and reducing the ridiculous bills future taxpayers will have to foot to provide the medical care that all those nicotine addicts can’t afford themselves — to sign on as sponsors of the application.

Bailing out the anti-smoking programs won’t transform the Competitive Grants Program into a model of good government, but it will save some kids and adults from a lifetime of addiction. And that’s a lot more than can be said for the overwhelming majority of programs that receive these grants.