Anyone who has tried to quit smoking knows that cigarettes are tough to resist—almost as hard as it is for politicians to keep their hands off big piles of money.
Smoking and government spending had a rare chance to interact in the late 1990s when the largest American tobacco companies agreed to pay $206 billion over 25 years to 52 U.S. states and territories in exchange for those jurisdictions giving up future legal claims against them. The payers and the terms have been tweaked over the years as a result of more companies joining and lawsuits involving some states, but they are now effectively payments in perpetuity.
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