Future graduates take notice: If you are planning to use the Millennium Scholarship to get through college, you may need to find an alternate route.

In 1998, several states in the U.S., including Nevada, sued tobacco companies because they claimed cigarettes caused health problems to their citizens. This lawsuit resulted in what is now known as the "tobacco settlement." Cigarette companies are required to pay millions of dollars each year to the different states involved in this settlement.

The states have guidelines as to how they are allowed to spend this settlement money. Part of it must be spent to educate youth about the dangers of smoking and tobacco use. As a matter of fact, the publication you are now reading receives a small part of funding from this settlement money. Another thing this money helps to fund is the Millennium Scholarships.

Tobacco companies are in trouble again. Now, they are being sued by an Illinois court for 12 billion dollars, because people claim they were misguided into believing that smoking a "light" cigarette is less harmful than smoking a regular one. Tobacco companies are saying that if they have to pay the 12 billion dollars in damages, they will not have the money to pay for the previous tobacco settlement. As a result, Millennium Scholarships are in jeopardy.

The scholarships will not be affected until around 2005, which means current sophomores will be the first graduates to face the loss of the scholarships. It's a shame to think the Millennium Scholarships may no longer be available, as they are very beneficial to many people.

This issue is, of course, raising quite a commotion and for obvious reasons. For starters, I think the whole issue is quite ridiculous. People get too sue-happy. They chose to smoke, and when their health became impaired because of the poor choices they willfully made, they should have realized that it was just a reflection of their own poor decisions. However, they got sue-happy and looked for someone else to blame.

The next question I see here is why are these scholarships based on tobacco company profits? Anything that is based on the profits of something is in possible risk. They should have taken better consideration when they were talking about youth education. Obviously, if something went wrong with tobacco companies’ profits, these scholarships would be at risk. They should have based the scholarships on something more concrete.

The Millennium Scholarships are not to warn people of the dangers of smoking. They are to get people into college. So the fact that Millennium Scholarships were paid for with this settlement money is not actually fulfilling the intended purpose of the settlement money.

It's interesting to note that one purpose of this settlement money is to warn people of the dangers of smoking. Yet, the reason this money was given to the states is because the tobacco companies were gaining profits through people smoking — very contradictory, don't you think?

The way I see it, if tobacco companies are having problems with their finances and can’t meet the court-ordered settlement payments, they should take money out of other areas in their budgets, not from the part that is being used to educate people.

-Return to May 2003 Issue-