Maine legislators last year made a big deal out of shortening the length of time Maine had to pay off the unfunded liability in its state retirement system – dropping it by just two years lopped off hundreds of millions of dollars in the interest payments. The added expense now will result in long-term savings and will no doubt be appreciated by Maine residents in 2020. Lawmakers have a similar situation this year, with the Fund for a Healthy Maine, which among other things, helps people stop smoking and live healthier lives. The long-term savings to taxpayers of having healthier residents, including far lower Medicaid costs, may be nearly as substantial as the liability savings.

Maine is one of only five states that the Centers for Disease Control says is spending an appropriate share of its tobacco settlement money on smoking prevention. The state has begun to get some encouraging results – a sharp drop among teen smokers, with fewer kids trying cigarettes and many quitting. Other states, notably California and Massachusetts, have older programs with even more impressive results, suggesting that Maine could make even more progress.

To a person, the advocates for the smoking-cessation programs assert that it is their comprehensive nature – ad campaigns, counseling, higher cigarette taxes, addressing pregnant women who smoke, offering nicotine substitutes – which accounts for the real difference in smoking rates. It is a convenient argument for people who want to keep these programs going, but until someone offers evidence to the contrary, it is all legislators have to work with as they decide how much of the Fund for a Healthy Maine gets reallocated to close the budget shortfall.

Much was made in the 1990s about getting rid of gimmicks in the budget, but if a gimmick can be defined as a maneuver that saves money over the short term but costs substantially later on, cuts to anti-smoking programs to patch the budget now fit the definition exactly. Consider just one expense: The vast majority of nursing home care is paid for by Medicaid, most of which comes from the federal government but plenty of which – enough to precipitate its own crisis – comes from state tax dollars. Smokers’ nursing-home costs are several times the cost for nonsmokers.

The first step taken by the tobacco industry in 1999 after it reached the settlement agreement with the states was to raise its advertising and promotions budget to a record $8.4 billion, including in youth-oriented magazines. The industry knew it would lose customers as the settlement money was put toward anti-smoking campaigns and needed to round up new ones.

It has no intention of going away and if Maine is going to afford its health care bill, it cannot afford to let its anti-smoking campaigns go away or diminish either.