If you want to kick the smoking habit, you won't get any help from the state this year. With state budget cuts and Gov. Mark Sanford's veto of the cigarette tax increase, the state will devote no resources to anti-smoking programs. The bill passed to raise the lowest-in-the-nation 7-cent cigarette tax by 50 cents would have allocated the first $5 million in revenues from the tax to smoking prevention and cessation programs. But the governor's veto and the failure of lawmakers to override it canceled that proposal. Then, last month, lawmakers cut the $2 million the state was investing in anti-smoking efforts; so, as of now, the state will spend no money on the programs. That means a state "quit line" where smokers could call to get advice will provide only basic assistance, paid for with a $250,000 federal grant. . . . While South Carolina has received $364 million from its $910 million settlement with tobacco companies to pay the cost of providing health care to smokers, it has spent just $5.4 million of that money on anti-smoking efforts. . . . If youth smoking rates, which have declined in recent years, begin to inch up, we'll know one reason why.


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