Pete Rawlings and I co-wrote the law creating the Cigarette Restitution Fund in 1999.

The State of Maryland was about to receive more than $500 million in annual payments from the tobacco companies under the settlement of our lawsuit against the industry.

We targeted the use of this money, instead of having it go into the state’s General Fund, where it could be used for any purpose.

Educating youngsters and teenagers on the negative health effects of tobacco is crucial to ending the tobacco epidemic in our state and nation. That’s one of the targeted uses in our law.

I testified today on House Bill 703, which would require that $21 million be spent annually for this purpose.

This would be an $11 million increase, requiring a reduction elsewhere in how the money in the Fund is spent.

That makes passage of our bill far from certain.

Later in the day, I learned about House Bill 747, a Hogan administration bill that would modify the Cigarette Restitution fund.

This “could be the vehicle for amendments that make changes to the program w/ a huge fiscal note,” I write the advocates for my legislation. “We need to think of things that can be done without money.”