State governments & the MSA
On November 23, 1998, all but four state governments entered into the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) with the 4 big tobacco giants.
These tobacco companies committed to pay out around $200 billion over twenty years to the state governments. Payment amounts are based on annual cigarette sales.
What would motivate authority to villiainize harm reduction?
Money.
Vaping nicotine is proven to help smokers off of cigarettes and keep them off.
If smoking rates drop because of vaping then the states get less money from the MSA. Therefore, successful uptake of vaping threatens to reduce the amount of the MSA payments.
Ignoring the purpose of MSA
In the first section of the MSA, this agreement was made “to avoid the further expense, delay , inconvenience, burden and uncertainty of continued litigation” by the state against the tobacco industry for expenses occurred to Medicaid as a result of smoking.
Unfortunately, the MSA did not make clear provisions for how the MSA money is to be spent and very little of it is being spent on the intended purpose.
MSA protects the 4 tobacco companies
Since the 4 tobacco giants entered an agreement to pay the state though the MSA, other tobacco companies are to be penalized by the state for doing business because the state doesn’t get a cut of their sales. So, since vaping helps smokers get off of cigarettes (which would lower MSA payments) the FDA catigorized vaping as tobacco and the states can ‘dilligently enforce’ laws against them.
It’s important to note that vaping is no more tobacco than vitamin C is an orange.
Spending money before they had it
Some of the state governments issued bonds based on the projections for future MSA payments. Unfortunately, they underestimated the rate at which smokers would stop smoking which means the payments were lower than they banked on. The actual payments were too insufficient to pay the bonds when due.
