Opinion: 3 lessons from the tobacco settlement on how states should use money from Meta

When the author became the first executive director of the country's oldest statewide tobacco control coalition in 1999, Colorado was already debating how to spend its share of the landmark tobacco settlement. Interest groups across the state lobbied for their priorities, while the author traveled to communities to argue that a significant portion should go to tobacco prevention and education rather than unrelated, even if deserving, programs. The author revisits that experience amid the $18 billion legal settlement between almost all states and Meta, as Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and others note parallels and states plan how to use the funds.

The 1998 tobacco settlement was monumental: states were to receive $200 billion to resolve lawsuits against Big Tobacco for its history of harm, leaving states to decide where their shares went. Before 1999, the author had only a basic understanding of what led to the settlement, beyond historic clips of tobacco executives testifying under oath before Congress that they believed nicotine was not addictive. The settlement was a game-changer in many ways: it directed hundreds of millions of dollars to states for programs, restricted youth-targeted tobacco marketing such as Joe Camel, funded the Truth Initiative, and led to the release of millions of industry documents detailing exploitative efforts to addict various populations and fight public health protections. That searchable online database became a treasure trove for researchers and journalists, confirming some of the worst suspicions about the industry.

But the tobacco settlement also fell short, and those missteps offer insights for the Meta settlement. Crucially, it did not specify how states could spend the funds, creating open season for unrelated projects. Some states used the money to fill budget holes or, in the Carolinas, to subsidize tobacco producers; Colorado appropriated most of its money to health-related programs, though almost all had no direct nexus to tobacco. As a result, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, tobacco prevention remains chronically shortchanged: the excerpt's final data point states that in fiscal year 2026, total state funding for these programs amounts to just 3.4% of the $21... figure cited.