Kathy Hoekstra at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy reports that many states actually spend more to subsidize movies that contain smoking than they spend on smoking prevention programs.

The Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California-San Francisco in November published a study on film subsidies and smoking titled Taxpayer Subsidies for US Films with Tobacco Imagery.

The study looked at the amount of “recent public subsidies for youth-rated (G/PG/PG-13) films with tobacco imagery” and found that many states, including Michigan, spend more money on film subsidies than anti-tobacco programs.