Tobacco's billion

Payments to Missouri from the national settlement with tobacco companies has exceeded $1 billion dollars as of this month, and only $1.8 million of the money has been spent on curbing tobacco use. When the much-ballyhooed national settlement was reached, taxpayers in affected states were assured the money would be used to combat smoking and help pay the states' costs of treating tobacco-related illnesses. But that's not what happened. Instead, the money has been used in Missouri and most other states to balance teetering budgets.

Missouri's attorney general, Jay Nixon, took the occasion of topping $1 billion in tobacco payments to Missouri to decry the fact that so little of the money has been used for its intended purpose. Surely he was speaking more as a candidate for governor than as attorney general. Otherwise, he would have been raising a stink a long time ago.

For example, Nixon was attorney general when he hired a cadre of buddy lawyers to help with the settlement right at the time the tobacco companies caved in. So without doing much work, Nixon's helpers received millions and millions of dollars in legal fees. And Nixon was attorney general when the legislature and then-governor Bob Holden signed off on spending the tobacco money on other state programs because a sour economy had dramatically slowed the pace of revenue growth.

Nixon's right. The tobacco money should have been spent for tobacco-related programs and health care. Question: What is he going to do about it? And why didn't he speak up earlier?