Instead of investing its tobacco settlement millions in smoking-cessation programs, New Jersey is using the money to plug up its budget gaps.
In 2010, the year Gov. Chris Christie took office, the state was funding smoking-cessation programs to the tune of $7 million. By three years later? Zero dollars.
In 2002, when tobacco control was high on the state's agenda, New Jersey was supporting 17 centers designed to help smokers quit. Today? None.
Now comes word that rather than spending millions of dollars from a gargantuan settlement with the tobacco industry on smoking cessation initiatives, the state will use the money to repay bondholders for a $90 million infusion Christie's administration needed to close a gap in the 2014 budget.
The maneuver comes despite warning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that 11,800 New Jersey residents die each year from smoking-related diseases, according to a 2014 report by the surgeon general.
N.J. tied for last place in keeping teens from smoking
And it comes despite reassurances from the CDC that prevention programs work.
In the Garden State, the Associated Press reported, a state-funded smoking-cessation program based at Rutgers had a long-term success rate of 35 percent, measurably higher than national rates around the country of around 25 percent.
How scary is the situation? The American Lung Association has given us an F in its review of how much money states dole out for tobacco-control programs.
In 1998, the tobacco industry agreed to pay states billions of dollars in perpetuity, with the goal of funneling the money into efforts to help people stop smoking, or to prevent them from lighting up in the first place.
And that did happen in the early days after the settlement - so much so that New Jersey was held up as a model in the field.
But it didn't take long for things to go sour.
The blame doesn't start with Christie. His two Democratic predecessors, Jim McGreevey and Jon Corzine, began the practice of trading the tobacco-settlement money for cash up front.
And when Christie settled in behind the governor's desk, he ended the state's $7 million spending on the smoking-prevention programs all together, citing declining rates of tobacco use.
Which makes absolutely no sense. It's like saying polio vaccines have been highly successful in eradicating the deadly disease, so we might as well stop administering them.
We get it that the administration is putting all its muscle behind addressing the opioid epidemic in the state, and we applaud the much-needed efforts.
But public health should not be a zero-sum game. We echo the words of Marc Kaplan, a spokesman for the American Cancer Society, who told the AP, "One population shouldn't suffer because we're helping another."
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