Republican Sen. Burt Saunders, chairman of a committee deciding health care priorities in the upcoming Florida state budget, has proposed a $57.9 million restoration of funds to the "truth" campaign to curb youth tobacco use, the Associated Press reported Feb. 15. 

Following the state's tobacco settlement in 1998, the truth program received $70 million in funding, a sum which has fallen off considerably in recent years; the program received only $1 million in each of the last three years. This decline occurred despite results that Ralph DeVitto, head of the American Cancer Society's Florida operation, found "staggering."

"Middle school smoking plummeted. High school smoking plummeted," he said.

Some observers said legislators simply didn't 'get' the campaign, which featured edgy television commercials. As funding dwindled, supporters mobilized and collected signatures to get the measure on this year's state ballot. If passed, the legislature would be essentially required to dole out the same amount of funding each year for the program.

Even if passed, the truth campaign may not run without opposition. David Howard, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., said, "They can use these ads to help educate and help inform. [But] if they decide to run campaigns to ... vilify the industry, we will consider challenging that and taking action."

All told, the state receives about $380 million a year from its 1998 tobacco settlement.