The annual diversion of $20 million of tobacco settlement funds to a smoking cessation program was wrong, the Mississippi Supreme Court has ruled.

The high court Thursday upheld a December 2006 order from a Jackson County chancery judge, who said only the Mississippi Legislature could appropriate money to tobacco cessation programs.

The Partnership for a Healthy Mississippi had appealed.

Gov. Haley Barbour, the Medicaid program and the Health Care Trust Fund argued the money was illegally diverted to the Partnership.

"The Supreme Court’s near-unanimous decision in the Partnership
case emphatically confirms what has always been obvious, only the
Mississippi Legislature can appropriate the state’s money," said Barbour. "A local judge and the Attorney General have no power to give taxpayer money to a private charity. It’s a shame it look a long, drawn-out lawsuit to stop this illegal and unconstitutional diversion of taxpayer money.”

Mississippi in 1997 settled its lawsuit against the tobacco industry, which was filed to recover public costs of treating sick smokers. The Partnership was created later as a pilot program using separate payments from cigarette makers.

When the money for the program ran out, then-Attorney General Mike Moore, who filed the tobacco lawsuit, obtained a December 2000 court order from Chancery Judge Jaye Bradley that directed $20 million a year of Mississippi's annual settlement payments to the Partnership.

Moore says the decision was a sad day for Mississippi and the Partnership's program could have prevented thousands of kids from ever getting addicted to tobacco and dying from cancer or heart disease.

State Treasurer Tate Reeves, chairman of the board of the Health Care Trust Fund, said he supports the need to educate Mississippi children on the impact of tobacco use. But Reeves says such a program needs to be done with accountability and oversight of how money is spent.