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Opening Arguments

We've been smoked

The swindling swine have hit the renege reset button:

A state budget proposal before the Indiana Senate could snuff out the state's top anti-tobacco agency.

The two-year, $28 billion spending plan that would take effect July 1 calls for the abolishment of the Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation agency and places tobacco-cessation efforts under control of the state Department of Health.

The program's budget also would be slashed from the $9.2 million it received in fiscal 2010 to roughly $5 million.

The money for the ITPC came from the state's $4.5 billion share of the tobacco industry's settlement with state attorneys general, which was an audacious suit to begin with, considering the billions and billions raked in from tobacco taxes. But the settlement money was taken under the pretext it would be used for smoking prevention and other health-related issues. Naturally most of it just went into the big "Hey, more money we can spend" pot. Weasels.

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