Editorial
Why not combine med school, tobacco fight?

Local anti-tobacco organizations are fuming over the state's decision to use $150 million of Hawai'i's precious tobacco settlement money to support construction of the $300 million University of Hawai'i medical center in Kaka'ako.

Although they back the creation of a "world-class" medical school, critics complain that the Hawai'i Tobacco Prevention and Control trust fund — which receives 25 percent of the settlement money — should be used as it was intended: to stop children and teenagers from becoming addicted to cigarettes.

And who can blame them?

Anti-smoking programs only recently received their first grants from the trust fund. Recipients include Malama Kaua'i Smoking Cessation for Pregnant Women and Their Families; the Gay and Lesbian Community Center's Comprehensive Program to Reduce Tobacco Use in the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Population; and the UH John A. Burns School of Medicine's Training Medical Residents on How to Address Smoking Cessation with Their Patients.

But do we really need a tug of war over tobacco settlement money?

Could we compromise by demanding that the Kaka'ako medical center include a world-class health education component that could focus on tobacco and other major health risks?

If the medical school benefits from the tobacco settlement fund, then shouldn't it bend over backward to make up for the loss to tobacco education funding?

We certainly think so.

Several of the 46 states that won money from the 1998 lawsuit against tobacco companies have gone against the spirit of the settlement, using the money for whatever they need, such as tax cuts, new sidewalks, boot camps and school construction.

By comparison, Hawai'i's bid to use some of the money for a medical school isn't far off the original mark.

Right now, there are dozens of anti-smoking programs scattered throughout the state. At least some of those programs could run through an education center at the medical school, just as community programs that operate through the University of Hawai'i and the state Department of Education.

Already, plans for the Kaka'ako medical school include a cancer research center. Let's get the university to include plans for an education unit so that Hawai'i's kids never reach the cancer stage.