Rep. David Swinford (R-Dumas), chair of the Texas House State Affairs Committee, is offering colleagues a stark choice: provide millions for a friend's unproven smoking-prevention product or see $5 million in stop-smoking funds taken away from the Texas Department of State Health Services, the Houston Chronicle reported Feb. 8.

Swinford wants the state to pay for "A Short Story of Life," a cardboard smoking cost calculator shaped like a pack of cigarettes; the legislator wants $3.7 million so that the device can be provided to all 4th- to 12th-graders in the state.

The manual calculator was developed by Rodney Burd, a birdseed dealer and Swinford financial supporter, along with Bird's brother, Larry, a professor of pediatrics at the University of North Dakota.

"Pushing something that to me is nothing but snake oil and using all your weight, it's just misuse of your position, official misconduct," said Suzy Woodford, executive director of Common Cause.

State health officials don't want the calculator, saying they can only fund prevention materials that have been proven effective. That led Swinford to warn last year: "If I were you, I would be putting a plan together because I'm coming after you guys. If it's not a hell of a lot better by the time we get back here in January ... I promise you the first bill I'll file will be to gut your program and move it. Is that plain enough?"

Texas Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins said that following Swinford's threat, he had advised the health department to consider using the calculator. "I think the way it would work out in this instance is to incorporate a tool such as that into the program that's being funded down in Jefferson County," Swinford's region, Hawkins said.

But state House Public Health Committee member Rep. Garnet Coleman (D-Houston) said, "By pushing a vendor when we have limited funds on a project that would not show as good a result as some other smoking-prevention programs, it's just a waste of the taxpayers' money."