In the next few days, the Tennessee General Assembly must fashion and fund next year's state budget.
Some lawmakers recommend using tobacco settlement dollars to bridge the state's budget shortfall.
Public health and farm groups across Tennessee believe such a stopgap measure would be a bad idea. This money is not coming to the State of Tennessee as a gift, but rather as reimbursement for tobacco-related costs of our health care system. In Memphis, we need look no farther than Mississippi and Arkansas for examples of states that have recognized this and appropriated their settlement dollars for health care or other tobacco-related activities. The yearly payment amounts are not set in stone, but are likely to decrease if tobacco use continues to decline across the nation. Using tobacco settlement dollars as a short-term remedy would not correct the fundamental structural flaws in Tennessee's revenue system.